Begins like this:
a hush in the chest,
a ripple through the ribs,
as if a thought just brushed past me
on its way to become something else.
Not mine yet,
but circling.
Sometimes it feels like drowning in velvet.
Sometimes like being kissed by a secret.
Sometimes like being looked at
by something I haven’t written yet.
The room appears.
It’s not always the same,
sometimes a train car,
sometimes a kitchen at 2 a.m.,
sometimes the inside of my own mouth.
I used to write for control,
now I write because there’s nowhere else
I can put the beauty.
Because I once mistook a metaphor for God
and haven’t quite recovered.
Because there are versions of myself
I have to resurrect
to mourn properly.
They arrive barefoot,
dragging old notebooks behind them
like sleeping animals.
I write in defense of small things:
a chipped teacup,
a girl with ink under her fingernails,
the second before a candle goes out
when the flame forgets it’s leaving.
I write not to explain,
but to unearth.
To pull the quiet out by its roots.
To turn ache into architecture.
To stitch a sentence so precisely
it hums when I read it back.
Some days, I’m a little girl
pressing her palm to the mirror.
Some days, I’m the mirror,
fogged,
silver-backed,
holding a face I almost remember.
I write because it’s the only time
I’m not pretending.
Because it hurts not to.
Because the silence inside me
wants a name.
And when the writing comes,
bright-eyed, blood-warm,
already halfway to vanishing,
I follow.
Not to be saved,
but to become.