I have to write. I have to. It's like a message on your answering machine that whines and screams and beeps at you, pulling you, nagging you. You, trying to forget it while it doesn't even acknowledge your existence, attempting to deny the next beep that will surely come if you don't just pick up the phone and listen.
So.
I'll just listen to my fingers hit the keyboard a little too hard and I'll listen to the whirring in my head that's calming and irritating all at once
and I'll listen to my heart on what it's trying to purge because maybe it's something important and maybe it's nothing at all. But catharsis is a matter of life and death, according to the hour of the night and the speed of your heartbeat.
Breathe.
What do I want to say? I want to say everything,
all the time,
even when I'm sleeping.
My mouth owes my brain an apology for being too slow and my brain owes my mouth an explanation for why it thinks what it does.
I'm morbid. I think about death too often and life too long. I think about rain only in its presence and the sun when it decides to resurrect. I think about how blessed I am to be able to think.
I think about my car accident.
I think about my Albania.
I think about my choices
and my reasons.
I think about my best friend and who she is at the time and where he isn't when I need him.
I think about existence. It is felt... But I don't know when he is.
I think about the new friends who feel old and my old friends who feel different.
I think about my sister. I think about my sister. I think about my mom. I think about Dad. I think about the maybes of that family.
Distancing myself.
Easier.
But not in the long run.
I think about questions.
and whether or not I'm asking them because I want an answer
or because I want to make a point to myself.
I think about the countless arguments I've won in my shower and the countless sighs of frustration I've muffled.
I laugh at how repetitive pain can be.
I think about God.
I think about substance of soul and how to differentiate it from my culture.
I think about politics.
I think about regular stuff again. Like grocery shopping, and the new job that I secretly love, my hands, my to-do lists, and the extended family I should call to thank for that birthday card with the much needed cash inside.
I think about past Christmases.
I think about movies that might have been my life or maybe they were my dreams.
I think about why I feel alive while listening to The First Days of Spring and the mechanics of music and the gears and nuts and bolts of my brain when its sparked with it. Why my skin can react to revirbirations of tiny hairs in my ears, and I can feel like I've always been in love when I know that I've never even known it.
When I'm lit on internal fire.
You could ask.
You could truly wonder what it is I feel, why I tick, why I know the things I know because of the hysteria I've lived.
Why I cling to reality.
Why you could go anywhere in the world and still not learn a thing because you haven't chosen to look at the scariest place in the world, the most difficult room to sit in, that tiny chamber inside your soul, that is your human self, your heart.
I have secret understanding. I have secret objectivity to my own heart.
But when I write...
when I write, I can throw my knowledge and my intellect and my maturity to the wind
and sit
in the darkest chamber of my soul
and listen.
