It was just the eight of us around the dinner table at Zax Restaurant in Austin, TX, when a friend of mine asked me a question.
“Oleg, what makes you unique?”
I have never been asked such question before.
I sat there, in silence, thinking of an answer.
“What makes me unique? What makes me unique?” I repeated it over and over again in my head.
No immediate answer came. I continued to sit with it.
Then, a thought entered my mind.
My eyes widened, a surge of energy passed through my body and I was finally prepared to answer his question.
“What makes me unique is the ability to write poetry, but I haven’t done it in many years,” I answered.
I started to think of the years while living in the Russian orphanage and how on some nights, after we were told to go to bed, I would climb onto the windowsill and with whatever light was available from the outside, I’d write poems. Poems that helped me process the life I was experiencing, poems that would get me through the ever so common traumatic experiences.
I was fortunate for the entire three years I lived in the orphanage, not to get caught by the caregiver on duty.
“Oh boy, would I have been in a whole lot of trouble.”
It was later that night, after dinner, still captivated by my friend’s question, that I wrote my first poem in years.
I had so much self-doubt at first, of whether or not I would be capable of the art of poetry.
But, as it turned out, I picked right back up as if I had been practicing writing poetry all along.
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