#felimnn

10. Kelsey Ipsen // felimnn

When I first saw Writing Spaces I began wondering what my own space was. I didn't think I had one anymore. I used to have an old school desk, the wooden one where you can open the lid and store things inside. We had them at my country school when I was six, my friends and I used to catch those white cabbage moths between cupped hands and keep them inside. Every time we opened our desk lids, the flutter of wings. I remember, then, a teacher asking us to write down what we thought the Bermuda Triangle was, and I began writing an entire chapter book about a curious blue triangle that children would pick up and disappear into different worlds. I remember being upset because the rest of the class had written a sentence and the teacher had told everyone what the Bermuda Triangle really was and we all had to move on before I had even scribbled down two pages of my epic novel. I wanted to create my own worlds. I had read about so many in books I'd taken in piles underneath the flower bushes below my first bedroom window.

When I got my very own desk in my room I immediately began to gather trinkets, glass cases, old satin flower pictures in golden frames, animal masks, genie lamps, a typewriter. Inside the desk I kept my pages of writing folded up like butterfly wings. I rearranged my treasures all the time, trying to create even a part of my inside world that I could touch and see on the outside. I had stopped beginning my epic novels about Bermuda Triangles, dolphins and cakes, I had stopped scribbling my teenage poetry and fantasy stories and had begun writing secret prose about a boy across the ocean who I couldn't be with. I'd always been secretive about my writing, a world I felt I couldn't explain properly yet so I needed to keep it to myself and allow it to grow. When I got my Macbook,it was the perfect match; the hidden paper butterflies could always fly away but with my Macbook they were safe and shut in.