People say I write with restraint. Sometimes they call my writing intentional. I know I don’t say everything I want to say when I write. Often it’s because all my work stems from life. My life, my experiences, my people. Everything can be traced back to an inciting incident – the crack in my skull from which springs an essay or a poem or a scene. Everything I write is about someone and if a sentence feels so specific that it could be made up it is because I am trying to not ask a question. And the question is this:
Are you here? Are you reading this? Did you care enough to get this far so that you could see the crumbs I have left for you? For us.
If a sentence sounds so entirely constructed as to be fictional it is because I have made this for you. Every piece is a mausoleum – empty – its rightful owner sitting in a cafe somewhere with people who are not me.
It sounds morbid I know but this is the only way I can keep them alive for me. How do I talk to someone I haven’t seen in ages but through the whispers echoing off marble.
How are you doing? You still have trouble falling asleep? Stay awake all night reconstructing your pain? Reliving it from a different perspective. Asking people questions in the hope they won’t ask you one, hope you won’t have to answer and give yourself away.
I made this one for you, it’s yours. I’ve made it nice so you can sleep and keep me company, we can talk about your mother and mine, you can make fun of me and I can pretend to be angry.
I can make you tea and you can fill the silence with your jokes so we don’t have to acknowledge the truth.
You are not really here. I make a bad necromancer. I bring you back to life all wrong, can’t seem to get the edge of your mouth right.
I try.
Nevermind.
How is your foot? How is your roommate that you never liked? Did you ever get that boy to be honest? We can sit here all day and all night, we have time. Unless you need to leave, to do important things sitting in cafes with important people who are not me.
I have spent a lot of time and an equal amount of effort in making my words sound nice. The phrases turn into the next with what I hope feels like elegance but the one thing I haven’t been able to master is the nakedness of it all – every word still gives me away. I like to think that is the human in me making its presence known, parapraxis beyond my linguistic control. I can edit and change and rewrite but I cannot erase it entirely. The plain fact that I say ‘you’ so much defeats my editorial crusade.
Are you here? Are you reading this? Did you care enough to get this far?
Amazing
I love this so much