Sarah Kay

But I think the world that I was a 13-year-old in was one in which we didn't have YouTube, for starters.

And I had never seen anybody that looked anything like me on a stage before.

or really on TV.

And so the idea of being a performer or an actress or anything that involved being in the spotlight did not appear to be possible or an option.

And I don't even think I could articulate that.

I know I couldn't articulate that then, but I do think that that had something to do with it.

And so to risk

saying out loud that that was a dream or a possibility seemed just absolutely absurd, and I would have been laughed out of the building.

I'm sure that was mainly in my head, but it certainly felt that way.

And I also didn't know that poetry...

could be performed until that moment.

And poems at the time were things I wrote in secret in a notebook that nobody ever saw.

So that's why both theater and poetry felt like secret loves.

I didn't think much other than I love poems.

It sounds like there will be other kids there who also love poems.

Oh, I remember vaguely that documentary I saw a little clip of.

I remember this is a thing.

So I guess I could try it one time.

I think so.

Something that doesn't always get included in the narrative of this is that I grew up very close to ground zero, and September 11th happened when I was 13.