Well, well, well! Look what I found digging through my old poetry archives!
This month's trip down memory lane takes us back to February 12, 1997, at exactly 10:56 p.m.
I was a 17-year-old high school senior living in Gainesville, Florida, and apparently Valentine's Day was already getting on my nerves! LOL!
The poem is titled "Nothing to Get."
Now, I honestly don't remember what inspired me to write this particular poem. Was I single? Did somebody disappoint me? Was I watching everyone else prepare for Valentine's Day while I had absolutely NOTHING going on?
Who knows?!
But judging by these words, teenage me wasn't expecting Cupid to make a special delivery that year!
💔 Teenage Me: Where Are My Flowers and Candy?
It's just another day, nothing to look forward to.
No boxes of candy and dozens of roses.
No cards that say, "I love you."
Okay, young lady!
Apparently, I had already decided Valentine's Day was going to be a complete disappointment before it even arrived!
Looking back, I have to laugh because I was only 17 years old, acting like I had already experienced a lifetime of romantic disappointment.
But let's be real. When you're young, Valentine's Day can feel like a popularity contest. Who got flowers? Who received candy? Who had a boyfriend? Who was getting all the attention?
And if you weren't part of the festivities, it could make you feel like you were missing out.
Grown Me: Now, don't get me wrong. I still appreciate flowers, thoughtful gestures, and a little romance. What woman doesn't enjoy being made to feel special?
But I've learned that a dozen roses and a box of chocolates don't necessarily equal genuine love.
And just because someone doesn't have a Valentine doesn't mean they're any less loved or worthy of being loved.
❤️ Teenage Me: Where Is My Romantic Dinner?
No teddy bears, no necklaces, no going out on a date that night.
I can definitely forget about having dinner by a candlelight.
Girl, you had a whole romantic evening planned in your imagination, and apparently nobody had signed up to participate! 😂
I find this part funny because even at 17, I already had an idea of what romance was supposed to look like.
The gifts, the dinner, the atmosphere, the attention.
Grown Me: Fast-forward almost 30 years, and I still enjoy the idea of a romantic evening. However, my expectations have matured.
It's no longer just about somebody taking me somewhere nice or buying me something pretty.
It's about the person sitting across from me.
Can we communicate? Do we genuinely enjoy each other's company? Is there mutual respect? Can I be myself without feeling like I have to audition for someone's affection?
Because a fancy dinner might last two hours, but the way someone treats you afterward matters a whole lot more.
💜 What This Old Page Taught Me
Reading "Nothing to Get" nearly 30 years later reminds me how much my perspective on love has evolved.
At 17, I was focused on what I wasn't receiving.
Today, I understand that love isn't measured by how many gifts you unwrap, how many dates you go on, or whether someone claims you as their Valentine.
It's also about how you value yourself, the love you receive from family and friends, and the peace you've learned to protect.
Now, does grown me have everything figured out when it comes to love?
ABSOLUTELY NOT! LOL!
I'm still learning, still growing, and still open to the possibility of finding a meaningful relationship.
But unlike teenage me, I don't believe an empty Valentine's Day automatically means an empty love life.
And that's a lesson worth appreciating.
💬 Now Let's Talk!
Have your expectations of love and romance changed as you've gotten older?
Do you still look forward to Valentine's Day, or has it become just another day on the calendar?
And here's the big question:
Would you rather spend Valentine's Day single and at peace or in a relationship where you're constantly questioning your worth?
As for 17-year-old me...
Girl, I hope somebody eventually bought you those roses! But I'm glad you kept writing, because nearly 30 years later, your words are still giving me something to think about.
Until the next page that raised me...Stay Poetic! ✍🏾💜
— Da Passionate Poet That Spits Fiya
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Authorpreneur
When I wrote Life of an Authorpreneur last year, I was learning firsthand that becoming a published author involved much more than putting words on paper. There was marketing, promoting, planning, and a whole lot of figuring things out along the way.
Now, as I prepare to release my second poetry collection my perspective has shifted.
I've realized that while the logistics are part of the journey, they shouldn't become the journey itself.
Somewhere between the deadlines, decisions, and details, I have to remember why I picked up the pen in the first place.
Because before I became an authorpreneur, I was a poet. And before there were book sales, promotional campaigns, or release dates, there was simply a woman with something to say.
That passion is what started this journey, and it's what I want to continue nurturing as I enter this next chapter.
One quote I want to remember, "I became an authorpreneur because of my passion for poetry. I refuse to let the business of it steal the joy of creating it."
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Questions of Life: Apparently, Somebody Made Me Mad Mad...
Every time I dig through my old poetry archives, I never know which version of my younger self I’m going to meet.
This time, I stumbled across “Questions of Life,” written January 23, 1997, at 11:00 p.m. I was a senior in high school living in Gainesville, Florida.
Now, almost 30 years later, I honestly cannot remember what was going on when I wrote this poem.
But judging by these words...
Somebody musta made me mad!
Maybe I had an argument with a friend. Maybe somebody disappointed me. Maybe teenage life was just life-n that particular night. Whatever happened, apparently 17-year-old me grabbed a pen at 11:00 at night and started questioning EVERYTHING.
The Opening: Straight Into the Drama
How much pain in your life can you take?
Why do so many people in the world act so fake?
Baby, I didn't even warm up! 😂
Looking at these lines today, I immediately notice how dramatic they sound, but I also see something familiar.
I was already using poetry to process whatever I was feeling.
Instead of simply writing, I'm mad at somebody, I turned my frustration into questions about life and people in general.
And apparently one fake person wasn't enough.
I had questions for the whole world!
Then Friendship Caught a Stray
When you think you have a close friend,
They end up stabbing you in the back.
Honesty—is the word many people lack.
Okay...
WHO DID IT?!
Because somebody clearly had teenage me feeling betrayed.
Unfortunately, I don't remember who—or even if there was a specific person behind these lines. But that's one thing I enjoy about revisiting my old poetry. Even when the memory surrounding the poem has disappeared, the emotion I was feeling somehow survived on the page.
And nearly 30 years later, I can still understand the message.
Friendships change. People disappoint you. Trust gets broken. And yes, honesty can sometimes be difficult to find.
Maybe teenage me wasn't being quite as dramatic as I thought.
Then I Turned the Mirror Around
When you look in the mirror, do you see your reflection,
Or just imperfection?
Is it love, hate, or just satisfaction?
This is probably the section that catches my attention the most today.
Suddenly, the poem isn't only about fake people and dishonest friends anymore.
Now we're talking about how we see ourselves.
Was I writing about myself?
Someone else?
Something I witnessed?
I honestly don't remember.
But I find it interesting that even as a teenager, my writing was touching on self-image and the complicated relationship we can have with the person staring back at us in the mirror.
That's a subject my grown-up pen certainly understands a lot better today.
And Apparently I Had Advice Too
Then teenage me asks:
Can you walk down the street with your head in the air,
Or do you stay inside and not go nowhere?
Okay, young poet...
I see where you're going.
She's talking about confidence. Holding your head up. Not allowing whatever you're going through to keep you hidden away.
And then comes the grand finale:
If this sounds like you, then I have some advice.
All I have to say is:
Get a life!
MA'AM!!! 😂😂😂
I laughed rereading that ending because after asking all these questions about pain, betrayal, honesty, self-image, and confidence, teenage me apparently decided she had done enough counseling for one evening.
Get a life!
That's it.
That's the advice.
No inspirational quote.
No beautifully wrapped-up life lesson.
Just three words and goodnight!
What This Old Page Taught Me
Jokes aside, “Questions of Life” shows me something pretty special about my writing journey.
The writing itself is obviously from a teenage poet. My structure, word choices, imagery, and understanding of these subjects have matured tremendously since 1997.
But the curiosity behind the pen feels familiar.
Why do people hurt each other?
Why is honesty so difficult?
How does what happens around us affect how we see ourselves?
How do we keep our heads up when life makes us want to hide?
Those are much bigger questions than teenage me probably realized she was asking.
And that's what I love about going through these old pages.
Sometimes I find an old poem and cringe.
Sometimes I laugh.
Sometimes I wonder, Girl, what happened to you that day?!
But every now and then, I discover a little piece of Da Passionate Poet hiding inside the girl who hadn't become her yet.
Her pen wasn't polished.
Her rhymes weren't perfect.
And apparently her advice needed a little work. 😂
But she was already paying attention.
She was already questioning.
Most importantly, she was already writing.
Now I'm Passing the Questions to You...
Almost 30 years later, I'm curious how YOU would answer some of teenage me's questions:
Do you think honesty is harder to find today?
When you look in the mirror, do you focus more on your reflection or your imperfections?
And what advice would your grown-up self give the teenager you used to be?
Drop your thoughts in the comments.
As for 17-year-old me...
Girl, I still don't know who made you mad that night, but thank you for picking up that pen.
Until the next page that raised me...Stay Poetic! ✍🏾💜
— Da Passionate Poet That Spits Fiya
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“Not Knowing”
There was a time when I didn’t overthink poetry.
I didn’t structure it, revise it ten times, or question if it was “good enough.”
I just felt something… and wrote.
“Not Knowing” came from that space.
Back then, life was a series of moments—unfiltered, unplanned, and full of “what ifs.”
This poem captures one of those quiet but powerful experiences:
seeing someone who stops you in your tracks…
feeling everything all at once…
and doing absolutely nothing about it.
No bold move.
No grand confession.
Just a heart racing, a mind wandering, and a moment slipping away.
What I love most about this piece now is its innocence.
It reminds me of a version of myself who was still learning how to:
There’s something beautifully human about almosts.
The almost hello.
The almost connection.
The almost love.
And even now, years later, I realize something deeper…
You never really know who might be feeling the same way about you in that very same moment.
This poem didn’t just come from a crush or curiosity—
it came from wonder.
From possibility.
From the unknown.
And in a way…
those are the pages that raised me.
— Da Passionate Poet that Spits Fiya✍🏽
Pages That Raised Me: Reexamining
I AM Femininity
Some poems don’t expire.
They wait.
They sit quietly on the shelf of your growth, watching you evolve… knowing one day you’ll come back and read them with different eyes.
For National Women’s Month, I’m bringing back a piece I shared last year — “Femininity.” Not just to repost it, but to reexamine it.
Because femininity shifts.
It deepens.
It softens.
It strengthens.
It unlearns.
The woman who first wrote that poem is not the exact same woman rereading it today. Life has stretched me. Conversations have sharpened me. Experience has refined me.
So this isn’t just a throwback.
It’s a return.
A return to the pages that raised me.
A return to the words that once defined how I saw womanhood.
A return to question what still fits… and what has outgrown me.
National Women’s Month is about honoring the women who paved the way — but it’s also about honoring our own evolution.
So today, I revisit “Femininity.”
With grace.
With curiosity.
With a deeper understanding of what it means to be a woman in my own skin.
Let’s read it again — not as who we were…
But as who we are becoming.
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Flatlining: When Love Drains the Pulse of Who You Are
I wrote Flatlining in my 30s — during a season where loving someone felt less like passion and more like survival.
At the time, I didn’t have the language to say this "situationship" is costing me myself.
So I wrote what my body already knew.
The word flatlining wasn’t chosen for drama. It was chosen because that’s exactly how it felt. Not heartbreak like the movies — loud, explosive, obvious. This was quieter. Slower. More dangerous.
It was the kind of love that doesn’t end suddenly.
It lingers.
It drains.
It convinces you to keep breathing while everything else inside you starts shutting down.
I was still in love with him — and that was the problem.
The poem talks about passions fading, not disappearing all at once. That’s how it happens in real life. You don’t wake up one day empty. You wake up less interested. Less excited. Less you. The things that once lived deep in your core start feeling distant, like memories instead of instincts.
That’s when you realize love has stopped feeding you and started feeding on you.
There’s a line in the poem about frustration breaking my mental state bit by bit. That part still feels painfully accurate. Emotional exhaustion doesn’t crash through the door. It chips away. One compromise. One swallowed feeling. One “I’ll deal with it later” at a time.
And when you’ve been strong for too long, even prayer changes. You stop asking God to fix it. You start asking how to survive it.
There were days I laid in bed motionless — not because I didn’t care, but because caring had worn me out. When your body is full of emotions your mind can’t organize, the tears escape without permission. They don’t ask if it’s a good time. They just come.
At night, the pain got heavier. Quieter. Lonelier. The kind of drowning where no one sees the water because it’s all happening inside you. You’re fighting for breath, not because you want to die — but because you want to make it to tomorrow.
That’s an important distinction.
This poem was never about wanting to disappear.
It was about wanting the pain to stop taking up all the oxygen.
One of the hardest truths I wrote was about how love can turn toxic. How the fire that once rushed through your veins can start to feel like poison. Not because love is bad — but because staying too long in the wrong place changes how love moves through you.
When you don’t leave, love doesn’t always wait patiently.
Sometimes it corrodes.
The black hole imagery came from that realization — the space where my heart used to beat wasn’t broken, it was hollow. Not dead. Just emptied. Unable to move on. Unable to love again. Suspended.
And then there’s the ending.
The beeping.
The flatline.
People sometimes read that and assume it’s about death. It wasn’t.
It was about numbness.
About the moment when your system shuts down because it can’t keep processing the same pain over and over. When your responses stop working. When even explaining how you feel feels like too much effort.
Flatlining wasn’t the end of me.
It was the warning.
Looking back now, I don’t judge the woman who wrote this poem. I understand her. She was tired. She was loyal past reason. She was loving deeply without protecting herself.
And maybe you’ve been there too.
If this poem resonates, it’s not because you want to stay in that place. It’s because at some point, you’ve known what it feels like to love someone so hard that you forget to check your own pulse.
This poem lives in my past — but it still matters.
Because it tells the truth about a stage many of us survive quietly.
And survival, even when it looks like flatlining, is still life.
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2025 archives
Blast from the Past: I Wish There Was More Hours in a Day (1997)
Back in 1997, I wrote this poem while a senior in high school at 10:44 p.m., wishing time could stretch just a little longer. It was a simple thought back then — wanting more hours to hang with friends, study, and just be.
Reading it now, I see how that young girl was already wrestling with balance — between freedom and responsibility, fun and focus. Even then, she understood that time was both a gift and a tease.
That last line still makes me smile:
“But just my luck — the day everything goes wrong,
My wish will come true that day.”
It’s that blend of humor and truth that reminds me where my poetic journey began. Sometimes, even as adults, we still wish for more hours in the day — but maybe the real lesson is learning to be present in the hours we already have.
— Da Passionate Poet that Spits Fiya
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INSOMNIA
click on it to read.
I wrote this 2012. Even though I have written over a decade, it still bring back emotions of what I was dealing with during the time I've created it.
🔑 Overall meaning:
The poem captures insomnia as both a physical condition and a metaphor for emotional overload. Work stress, financial worries, romantic heartbreak, and inner fears converge, leaving no escape even in dreams. The time stamps intensify the progression — each hour feels heavier, more confining, until morning comes without true rest.
✨ Reflection
Looking back, this poem shows how sleepless nights were about more than just not resting — they were about carrying the weight of stress, heartbreak, and unspoken fears. Writing it out was my way of making it through until morning.
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Blast from the Past: I Am Femininity
Theme then:
I was defining what femininity meant to me — layering strength, independence, softness, and sensuality all in one voice. My younger self in my thirties wanted to claim every role and show that womanhood cannot be boxed in.
Writing style then:
✦ Very declarative, repeating “I am femininity” like an anthem.
✦ Straightforward and direct — not much hidden between the lines.
✦ Strong identity statements (“I am playful,” “I am the one who loves to be held”).
Theme now:
Reading it today, I see it as both a celebration and a self-reminder: womanhood is not a single thing. It’s fluid, emotional, bold, and spiritual. I still stand by that declaration — but I express it with more nuance now.
Writing style now:
✦ My poetry today leans more into imagery and metaphor, pulling readers into the feeling instead of just the statement.
✦ I weave in rhythm and layered emotions that reflect life experiences.
✦ My voice is more polished and intentional, but it still carries the same pride in identity.
Growth point:
Back then, I was naming who I was.
Now, I’m embodying it in deeper, more poetic ways.
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8/1/25
The central “ache” is emotional—not physical—born from an unmet longing to love and be loved.
There's a yearning not just for romance but for emotional validation and intimacy.
You express a painful sense of delay in finding love: “I feel like I am last in line.”
The ache is linked to time passing—“tick tock”—and the feeling that others receive love more easily.
You reflect on a past love who rejected or abandoned you, and how that absence still lingers.
This pain prevents you from fully moving on.
There's a heavy emotional weight, especially toward the end, as tears and memories surface.
A sense of resignation rounds out the final line: “I guess this is what it feels like to still have a broken heart.”
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