The First 26 is a project that came to mind a few years after the pandemic had started. Feeling lost, trapped, hopeful and all the big emotions at once, I had an idea to compile all of the poetry I have written in the first twenty-six years of my life. I wanted to share with the world how much a person can change over the years and how different a persons way of thinking can become. Dealing with loss, grief, happiness and peace as a small child feels a lot different than dealing with those things as an adult. As the grief becomes more of a common occurrence, the moments of happiness become more rare. In this collection you will read about mental health, a woman with faith that starts to waver, wishes for a better family, grief for losing loved ones and lots of contradictions. I guarantee that I finished writing this a few days before my twenty-sixth birthday and I did my very best to edit this book as little as possible, in order to keep true to the younger version of myself. These collections are not in chronological order, but instead listed into different categories and spread across approximately 300 pages. I hope you (the reader) will enjoy my poems of pure fiction, horror stories and made up love affairs. I also hope that someone out there can relate, as I expose my sins and every single part of my soul.
