About a year ago in the middle of a sleepless night I decided to write about the conflict keeping me up. The only type of writing that could accurately capture how I was feeling and thinking was poetry. This was a surprise to me but what was even more surprising was that everyone I shared this poem with loved it. From that point forward, I began writing poetry whenever it came to me. Sometimes in floods, sometimes in trickles; I accumulated a collection of my own original works that inspired me to illustrate each poem. Ink Stains is a collection of over 70 original poems and illustrations self-published in hopes that they might resonate with someone else. But also in hopes that I could set them free.