Age twelve.

That is when it happened to me. And that is when it happened to my daughter Ella.

So perhaps I should have known that poetry would slam her from all directions.

We are not talking about the comforting couplets of Suess or the shape poems of kindergarten either. The emotional rawness of her adolescence was matched only by the naked feeling of music-wrapped words. Combine that with her finger itch to create, to draw, to write, to feel, to process, left me her dad in a pickle.

How could I truly hear and feel her? How could I relate and remember? How could I respond to her call?

How could we talk?

What follows is our conversation captured in verse.