Why Do You Write?

I don’t know the answer to this question.

You’re begging me to tell you but I am unsure of what you want to hear

All I know is that I scratch pen across paper

I decorate my words with emotion,

Breathe in once then release a tidal wave of feelings

Feelings that I realize are bigger than me,

Bigger than anything I know

But I write them down and pour out my tears,

Heave a sigh,

And laugh at my stupidity forever thinking that a pen and paper could ever give me therapy

How could it provide an overstuffed couch for me to lie on?

Be a friend whose shoulder I can cry on?

Respond to a gentle caress?

Ink has no arms that I can feel safe in,

But somehow I do with it held in between my own fingers,

Carried in a plastic vessel that I press continually against paper

You’re begging me to tell you why I write

And it is because writing somehow keeps me sane,

When no one else can