Reader’s Choice: On writing

Sometimes it’s hard to write in the shadow of this great place. Of which I mean here, this city, this shoreline–this flawless space that continuously makes me catch my breath at the sight of things so wild and so free. I’ll forget. I call it home as if you can dig away at the ice and mud to find my roots buried and reaching deeply. They are not here. They are in another place. But I do bloom in this Northern wilderness; I have not atrophied.

I sit and write, in many ways and in many places–but often only when I’m alone. I do not know if M knows he is marrying a writer–what it means. How many pages I can fill with things we do not talk about in the cradle of our everyday. That there are still poems of other loves. Because I have to love them all, faintly, but wholly. They are my pen to page. They are not memories. They are my stories.

When I write for him, his cheeks color. He is embarrassed. He thinks, “Why must it be so dramatic?” The presentation, the art of arrangement, alliteration, words trumpeting through tightly scribbled stanzas. There are exaggerated metaphors and couplets so honest they can’t be spoken out loud. Maybe then, more truthfully, I’m the embarrassed one. Do I always have to be so dramatic?

Can I not exist with a little more decorum–with a little less running about? Pages do not always need so many words. I do not need to bring them up. Here! Here! Read this so I can feel I’ve done something passionate and deserving of accolades! It just becomes noise, then. I cannot seem to wander quietly on with my eyes down and my poems in check.

Instead of striving to alter myself, I am waiting for someone to tell me I am OK. Justified. A glorious embodiment of talent and craft. Have at it, readers.