#~k.

Writing always felt different for me. From that very first time I discovered it, entirely on accident no less. A poetry project for 7th grade English. My classmates would ask me to help with their pieces, how did you write that? How did you know how to say that? How do you choose the words? I had no answers for them. I was not choosing or knowing. I used to say that the pencil moved me, some invisible lips whispered in my ear and I couldn’t ignore it. The words were just there, floating in the space between the desks, in the pause between each pencil scratch, lingering with the dust motes under fluorescent lights, and I only had to let them flow into me. I think, most people, at best, use language as a tool, a weapon, a device. An instrument to meet their needs. I think, at worst, most people are so deaf and blind to the precise meanings, the beauty of a well put together sentence, the intricacies behind one word over another. Everything that lies in wait under the surface of that font. It always bothered me, that writing, that language and words, were so easily counterfeit. It was the only kind of blasphemy I knew. Writing, to me, was a force of nature, an energy, an element, unseen but wielding unmistakable effect, like gravity, woven into the fabric of existence with us. You can’t see it, and most people go their whole lives without realizing it’s really there, let alone how it works, but once upon a time an apple fell on Isaac Newton’s head and nothing was the same after that. And at 13, I could lose myself in the orbit of that great celestial body, I happily let it carry my body across the universe, into the stars. But then you’re not 13 anymore, and even though you promised it wouldn’t, somehow life takes hold. That unheard song, that unseen power, it faded further and further away without me, the more I neglected it, got too busy, put it aside for necessary things. I always thought the stories would leave me one day. That, finally, one day I wouldn’t feel that pull, that ache, in my soul, in the deepest center of my chest, when the story was over. I thought one day I wouldn’t be inhabited by them anymore, if one day I grew to love my life enough, love myself enough. And I do love my life now, and I do love myself the best way I know how, but still, I pick up that book, I watch that movie, I listen to that story, and I’m gone. Each time it’s over, it’s like re-entering Earth’s atmosphere. It’s bittersweet, the love, the longing. I imagine it’s how an astronaut would feel looking at Earth from so far above, captivating and beautiful and terrifyingly alone. You love the view, you love the way it feels, but in a weird way it always makes you miss home, and yet yearn for it once more as soon as your feet touch the ground. I never imagined the stories would keep finding me, across all this time and space.

I lie at least a dozen times a day. I hate that about me. I like honesty. I lie and tell people I’m an honest person. I think to myself the truth will set you free at least half a dozen times a day. I thought about getting it tattooed in a ring around my ankle once. Like a shackle. Nobody has ever asked me, but if they did, I would say the lie I tell most often is fine. I’m fine. It’s fine. It is all fine. Everything is fine. I say the lie to anyone who asks. I tell myself the lie in the mirror. I practice the smile I say it with. Secure it on my face until it’s utterly convincing. If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it still make a sound? If a lie is told and no one is around to catch it, is it still a lie?

My thoughts are a black sea and how easily the roiling current drags me under.

I’m a broken doll and I don’t work quite right. I’m missing so many pieces now. Somebody tore out a button eye here, and another buzzed off all my hair. I am covered in dirt and snot and god only knows what other unholy substances. But I am not well loved. I am well worn. I’ve been played with too many times, not kindly, not sweetly. I was not a little girl’s favorite doll tucked into her side each night. I’ve been trampled in the school yard, left out in the rain, abused, bloodied and bruised. And I’m all alone in this pitch black room laughing like a maniac, because it is so so funny how I always forget. The depth of your love is the depth of your wound.

I’m a person and I have feelings. I have a heart in this chest, it beats and it breaks and it bleeds like anyone else’s. But nobody really remembers that, between the kindness and good deeds and the giving of myself until there’s nothing left. Between the cleaning and making dinners and don’t forget dessert too. People never really like me, just what I can do, what I can offer, the purpose I serve. Once that purpose runs out, everyone leaves, and when they find a use for me once more, they return. And so the endless cycle goes.

I spend my days in a haze of daydreams about you. I try to restrict my smile to a straight line, so as not to give my thoughts away. My lips don’t listen. I try to gather my imaginings, like wisps of cotton plucked off a branch, stitch them into an orderly cloud of substance and sense. They don’t yield in their running, falling off the edge of the earth and whisking me to space along with them. I say to myself, if I squeeze my eyes shut tight, until the explosion of colors plays behind my lids, in those fireworks I see an infinite amount of days just like these, unfolding endlessly in front of me. They rush by in an instant. Like smoke, I taste them in a breath and they are gone before the exhale. But god, I could live forever in that one second so full it bursts, staring at you and laughing with you and tracing the lines of your skin, watching how our faces fold and crumple and the skin sags and the hand of time wiping across the landscape of our lives. And it looks beautiful, full of light and promise like the first sunrise of a new year, yet unspoiled. And it feels like the seconds before the skydiver leaps out of the plane, the stab of fear, the knees weak with anxiety, and the sweet exaltation of “fuck it all” and leaping forward anyway.

“He’s so freaking cute and I love him so much!”, I exclaim to no one in particular when we get off the phone. I always wait for you to hit end, somehow I’m unable to touch that angry red button. The words rush out, permission be damned, because someone has to hear them, even if it’s just the still air and TigerLilly. Because I can’t hold it in anymore. I find myself thinking a lot, that I’ve never loved anyone like this. The more I consider it, the truer it becomes.