My teen years were spent over poems I barely knew the meaning of, collecting books of secrets that lit the way of my adult hours, reciting verses of future aches. It was second nature to express myself this way, to live under the guise of this life. My lips knew the path between heart and syllables. There was no question that this would always be a part of me. It was a question of how I was going to live this fate.
It is common to deviate to different paths from time to time. From caressing EQ knobs to flicking at camera shutters, I tasted the peel from every fruit in the basket. But I always went back to the poisonous apple, the ruby madness of traitorous juices dribbling down a thousand deaths, written in ink and lead. I've been Eve, Snow White, Helen of Troy, any women betrayed by sin of a coiled snake. One bite lead to another and now I'm here, a couple of thousand poems later, written under a pile of pleasure and pain.
Yet I still scrap along. I let the apple dangle dangerously low, watching slow drips of inspiration stretch heavily down to my mouth. I wait for the break. Tilt back for the arrival. My lungs open sharply as I feel the slam of the downpour. I still tremble when the perfect line creeps in. This rush is ancient, but it's all about the renewal of faith, right?
I have to believe we will always find each other.
This is a lonesome battle, the constant need to write versus writing. There are days spent as a wall with eyes, seeing and unable to scream. Weeks upon weeks, actually. These are the times I want to give up. The days where I don't care about the rush and being knocked into breathlessness by the ability to bend worlds on my tongue. I could retire into the insistent echoes of the rat race. I can survive and say I was once a writer, but now I'm just...here.
But I can't. When the apple dangles closes to my lips, I know I will always do this. I was writing poems since before I had my first kiss. Just like you can't undo knowing what it's like to tremble at the first contact of lips, I can't undo knowing how to make the world tremble through the art of the written.
I can't lose my grip on this.