First-Person

I have never been comfortable with writing in first-person,

too accustomed to living in the third-person,

observer peering out stained glass windows.

I think of what I have been lacking in my writing

and what I have been lacking in myself:

other writers will write that the air tasted crisp,

licking their lips as October cider frothed at the seams of their mouths.

or that losing someone felt like losing a tooth,

prodding at the gap in their hearts that they just can’t leave alone.

I alone have not been able to write any such thing,

never having taken notice of what I lived through.

It was never important for myself to take such matters into account.

But it turns out writers are just about as wise as anyone else

and do a shit job at playing God because they’re too busy

playing themselves, dirty from making mud pies

with the very same characters they crafted.

I have never been comfortable with writing in first-person and

how much I hated myself

and ran away from my body into the storybooks, movies, fantasies

is directly proportional with

how much my writing falls flat and

-flees from my grasp.

I have spent too much of my life mourning for the world’s tragedies

to ever realize the tragedy of a writer who

because they thought their experiences couldn’t hold a candle

to burning passions

-I was never desirable, worthy of heated loves

to melancholy ruminations

-What I felt seemed to shrink in a room that kept growing in emptiness

to the epic struggles readers seemed to hungrily devour

- I was nothing to write home about.

I was never too good at slam poetry because I didn’t think anyone would be listening in but

all this time,

maybe I was looking for hell to wreak and

in many moments,

I could feel something loosen in my rib cage and

someday,

I will be comfortable writing in first-person.