On a whim I called an old friend. She wanted to know if I was still writing. I write every day at my job, but that's not what she meant. "For fun." The fun kind. I struggled to explain. How exhausted I feel when I read a poem or language that feels overly fluffy. Language for the sake of language. Authors in love with their own voices. How it's been awhile since I read anything that startled my eyes open, that made the pulse of blood in my veins zing. Anything that made the cells of my skin dance. And how, oh, that feeling is times 100 when I try to write something of my own. I ache for clarity, for words that say what is real and still make you feel.
I want to write something and surprise myself. I want better words, a new language. I want to type out a binary message with the simplest of words. I want to define the essence of things.
And I do. I know the essence of things. I know the essence of all the things. It's a singer who sings, "And the shadows skip like sharks through the gasps of air between them." It's women and magic and clothes and dancing. It's color and joy and creation, it's my daughter's white blanket and my other daughter's headbands. It's the void between all of those things. The great, gaping blackness between scary, wonderful bursts of light. It's falling and flying and -- being. It's just being. Who has words for that? No word or collection of words is ever enough.
