My heart goes out to motherly observances from hearts worn on tattered sleeves. Battle-worn women who have dragged themselves out of bed - smiling at nagging husbands, crying children, or to no one but themselves. They occupy train seats, lean over, and glance at preoccupied youth on smartphones and tablets, smiling to themselves in wonderment about technologies that will outlive their sacrifices.
I do the same when I see young teachers marking cranked out pages from foolish, aspiring writers, leaning over to glance at potential on my way home from work.
I spend my days with money hungry zombies for the chance to sneak metaphors onto blank pages into the wee hours of the night. I wake up at the cusp of six every morning, only to spend rapidly falling minutes staring into a space that doesn't involve morning commutes, ringing phones, or demeaning bosses.
I sold out a long time ago with only survivor's guilt to cling to at night. Too tired to attend shows, excuses easily prepared on my tongue as to why I can't read, why I can't write, why I can't breathe. Sometimes I think I'm ready to live a life of regret.
But then I wake up with metaphors tangled tightly in my sheets. Verses haunt me as I wipe the remnants of night from my eyes. I carefully adjust cool streams of water over a body struggling to mutter rhyme schemes to the beat of soap scum. I practice delivery of poems with tooth brushes angled in my mouth.
I struggle against the clock, itching to call out for a week straight and write. Is a week enough? Would I even go back? I fear I will eventually empty...and then where will I be? Do I have what it takes to live as writer day in and out? Is the chance of the word more thrilling with obstacles or will I fold with more freedom?
I aggressively scold fellow writers to always give it their all. I don't want to find mirrors in their eyes. I can live with the haunts of motherhood with blank wombs and hidden paper children under my own veins, but I cannot find love in the misery of others. I tightly grip their pen to their hands and tell them, "No matter what, always keep this by your side. Your pen comes before anything else. Do not let the world make you sacrifice your word. And please, more than anything else..."
...don't become a sell out like me.
I do the same when I see young teachers marking cranked out pages from foolish, aspiring writers, leaning over to glance at potential on my way home from work.
I spend my days with money hungry zombies for the chance to sneak metaphors onto blank pages into the wee hours of the night. I wake up at the cusp of six every morning, only to spend rapidly falling minutes staring into a space that doesn't involve morning commutes, ringing phones, or demeaning bosses.
I sold out a long time ago with only survivor's guilt to cling to at night. Too tired to attend shows, excuses easily prepared on my tongue as to why I can't read, why I can't write, why I can't breathe. Sometimes I think I'm ready to live a life of regret.
But then I wake up with metaphors tangled tightly in my sheets. Verses haunt me as I wipe the remnants of night from my eyes. I carefully adjust cool streams of water over a body struggling to mutter rhyme schemes to the beat of soap scum. I practice delivery of poems with tooth brushes angled in my mouth.
I struggle against the clock, itching to call out for a week straight and write. Is a week enough? Would I even go back? I fear I will eventually empty...and then where will I be? Do I have what it takes to live as writer day in and out? Is the chance of the word more thrilling with obstacles or will I fold with more freedom?
I aggressively scold fellow writers to always give it their all. I don't want to find mirrors in their eyes. I can live with the haunts of motherhood with blank wombs and hidden paper children under my own veins, but I cannot find love in the misery of others. I tightly grip their pen to their hands and tell them, "No matter what, always keep this by your side. Your pen comes before anything else. Do not let the world make you sacrifice your word. And please, more than anything else..."
...don't become a sell out like me.
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