Lexington has a new youth poet laureate.

It's just the second time this title has been awarded.

We were at the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning as the new winner was announced.

I think I've been a nerd my whole life.

I've always been into reading and writing.

I was encouraged by my writing teacher, Mr. McCurry.

Told all of us that it would be a good exposure to our poetry.

So you consider yourself to be one a writer, self-destructive Head above the clouds, angsty, messy artist with no grip on reality, or any sense of what the real world is going to show you.

I think it's important to remember to write for yourself.

I used to start out writing short stories and stuff, but there is one day I really wanted to write something, but I wasn't sure if it should be a mix of like a short story or I kind of want it to be like a diary.

So I just started writing and eventually they just started falling into place, into stanzas.

You tell me I am beautiful in your native tongue, but make me promise to never forget these words as if they will act as the only tether between me and the culture I can never be a part of.

I used to think that poetry was very scary and that it was like so many ways to interpret it.

But I found, like, all those interpretations can really be left up for creative control, and I really enjoy that part.

A ceramic flower stuck in a muddy riverbank.

Its petrified existence as we jumped from mossy rocks, wrinkled hands and mind as our reflections became infinite.

Poetry is something that is often not looked at and kind of like moved to the side and having an opportunity for especially used to do this, to spread their voices and to share their opinions and their poetry.

And the beauty of that I think is really important.

Poetry is a creative outlet.

I found that was really easy to write about and write in whenever I was feeling stressed or down or just even happy, even because there's no rules.

I'm sorry.

Sorry for ignoring your rage, for sewing your mouth shut, because I thought that it would finally make them like you.

To the girl who tried.

I'm sorry for giving up.

For looking, not for not looking for another way out.

I hope that people can take something away from my writing, because I think that's all that really matters is that the writing is meaningful and you get something out of it.

Being youth poet laureate will be exciting, exhilarating, stressful, but most importantly, it will build you.

It is important for you as a writer, and it is important to the community and the world around you.

You should cherish each moment until you're here today, standing like I am handing off the baton to the next youth but Laureate, the next youth poet Laureate of Lexington, Kentucky, is so avid.

So what do I write?

I write different the messages of my mind over the canvas of the world I live in.

I write to live to the universes of my own mind.

The shape, the tethers of the one I reside in.

I write to live.