On Being A Writer

I’m sparked, waiting for the light to hit.

I feel you, a hot whisper on my neck all the live-long day, only hearing you when the moon rides high, when most people won’t speak, except in guttural, human noises; a nightmare’s cry, a lover's call.

But you, you scream my name in the nighttime. Your noise is deafening. I don’t want to listen, but what I mute becomes so loud that I can’t keep my eyes closed. I toss and turn in my bed, strangled in sheets. When you won’t stop, I get up, bare feet on a wooden floor, sliding towards the sound like new shoes on shiny, untouched ice.

I can’t turn you away; scared that if I don’t listen to the words, if I don’t strain to hear the voice that’s not mine, I’ll blink and miss the moment, blink and miss what will finally show me to myself. You are like a cicadas; buzzing and incessant. You are like a piano, dusty and haunted, played by old hands. You are like a lady-singer, sweetly pretty, hurt and poetic, with a voice so sad that she could never have loved herself.

You are something bigger than me. I don’t know where you come from. When you’re gone, I don’t know where you go. When you come back, you tell me of your travels, whispering stories to me, letting me keep them as my own. I am a woman possessed, spending my life waiting to hear what you have to say next.




When you speak to me, we live somewhere else. Where the world echoes like harps and violins, where the wind moves, choreographed, like a prima ballerinas, where strangers look like black and white photographs. Here, with you, there are beginnings. There are ends.

We are selfish with each other. You don’t speak to me when other people are around. When you leave me lonely, I study them, wondering how to describe their voice, how to write their face, how to tell them to you later. You set me on fire. You drown me with rocks. You drive me miles from home, spin me like a top, and leave me to crawl. Together, we jump from buildings. We fly like sad sparrows. We dance like Fred Astaire. We kiss, chests cracked wide open; lungs touching hearts, organs touching bones.

I can never get it all out, I have never said it right. The words have never sounded as truthful as they feel. And so, I keep digging, piling thick mud into a hole with no bottom, waiting for you to speak again. I will wait, forever, listening for the petals to unfurl, waiting to hear the sound that’s made when hope blooms.