I want to share something with y'all.
When writing is hard, I've been finding myself back at poetry.
When I was 12 to 14 I wrote a bit of really bad poetry, so it's not totally new territory for me. I thought I was just probably not very good back then, figured stories were what I was good at. Then last year I made a friend who loves poetry, and somehow I ended up writing a ten minute long spoken word poem about diabetes. Now poetry has become part of my weekly writing. I don't plan on it, but I end up writing poems a lot.
Today I just wanted to share one. I've been posting them on a new Instagram page @latenightwriterthoughts so check that out if you'd like to read more!
Criteria for Life
Someone please rip this writers heart out of my chest. All I get is stories. They are out there- living. Living. Living.
Trapped inside my mind, spinning storied maladies. It won't cure me. Won't take the lonely and fill it only turn it into something beautiful and relatable. And I'll be sitting behind it, presenting it to the world, still lonely
A spider, lone spinning it's web. The only things close enough, dead things. I think my own heart is beating. Not sure if I still feel it
proof of life:
1) order- but my life is surely chaos. Can I argue that with words I organize the chaos that reins inside? Yes yes, I think I'm alive
2) sensitivity or response to the environment - I'm sure about that. The world begs me to come, to explore, to be awake. And I drink my cup of coffee and stare out the window. Out there, I've tried out there. I'm to sensitive for life in the wild. My emotions overflowing and unpredictable. Someone might get cut out there. I might get crushed out there. But at least here, in this cage or this web I've spun myself I have some semblance of safe. Yes, yes, I think I'm alive
3) reproduction- everyday I multiply in stories. I don't think there will come a day that I don't create and create and create. Except there have been days... Hollow empty days. Days spent reaching out and reaching out and reaching out- and everyone else having someone else already holding their hand. And so I cry, lay down, wake again, and create something new to describe that specific variety of blue. That feels very much like life to me. A life separated, but still alive
4) growth and development- It feels like I've become stuck in the same hole. Day after day, choosing the same way to move forwards. Work on a story, hate the story, love the story, quit. Make a new friend, become close, something happens and I can't find them anymore. Sit and feel lonely, reach out to someone, but it's to dark for anyone to find my hand to hold
I've asked so many times to be held, and I'm still waiting. I met all the criteria for life. I must be alive. I think I missed one- F*** the criteria. To be alive is to feel pain. And I know I feel pain. To be alive is to tell stories, and that's all I can manage to do. Only way I can connect to someone. Someone out there who might finally understand. Lonely somewhere else. Also looking for a home. Sometimes written words are the only things we can swallow to slip in-between the space in our chest left called lonely, and two souls can be a little less lonely sharing those words. Lonely words taste the same in the mouth of another lonely soul. But lonely words have a way of making you feel lonelier. Sadness loves to sit beside you, it can't life you up or cure the pain
I'm not sure how to do that. My writers heart wasn't hardwired with instructions for that. Just for melancholy and story. And I don't think I can find the instructions, can't venture to far outside of this isolated web I've spun, have to take care not to hurt anyone else. Let anyone else hurt me, my heart more. So maybe I haven't met the criteria for life.. because I'm still not sure if what I'm living is life.
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