Why

I write because I don’t know what I am

I search for answers in the taste of ink

For I think my true self may be revealed

On paper

Some nights it slinks out

Dancing from the tip of the pen

Sputtering, shaking, but alive

It likes to hide in long pauses

And timid punctuation

But sometimes it lets itself be seen

On these nights, I am whole

The first night was long ago

Deep into the evening,

Well after the sun had kissed the sky farewell.

I had crumbled into a heap of dust

Utterly deflated,

Tired of being kicked down.

I heard the screams through the thin slice of an excuse for a wall.

I tasted the pain from the next room over

I closed my eyes and I made a decision

To resist the world

To unbury the hurt

And so it began

The toiling

Over that little notebook

Until the moon was nothing but a faint wink

The end of first night that I felt alive

Now the cracks in the walls are still

Silence, lovely as a prayer, kisses the air

From the other side of the wall.

But inside I am still broken

On these nights I bleed ink.

I let it gurgle up out of me

The pain

The insecurity

I want to see what creature I really am

I peel back the layers of paint

So hatefully caked on to classify me

Year after year

too fat too slow too heavy too stupid

never never never going to be enough

I carve a new identity

I climb up to the top of the angel’s wings

Lips tasting the hot fire of release

I write because

On these nights, I am free