I don’t write about you. Not anymore.
My hands refuse to do it now. I start, but my fingers begin to cramp, I reckon it’s reminding me love is painful. Two words later, it starts to get quiet, love, it tells me, could be very lonely. Five sentences in, a writer’s block chokes me, he says the start is the only fun part. So I pause.
Two months ago I wrote a poem about a man I met on the streets of Macau. His hands asked for money but his eyes cried for someone who never came back. I asked him how he got here, he let me peek into his bag. There were three photographs, one old plane ticket and 200 grams of coke. I began to talk but he turned to walk away. “I left everyone that I can’t live without” he said. “It’s a sexy little paradox, isn’t it?” I’ll never really know his story.
Seven weeks ago I wrote a blog about a 10-year-old girl I saw at a café. She walked in holding her mother’s hand, but she was staring at her pink shoes with yellow bows. They walked in with a man. Her father, maybe. The couple was arguing loudly about bills. The little girl stood still, her eyes fixed on her yellow bows. I imagine in her head she’s in field of sunflowers or maybe eating a tub of French fries but any moment now she’s going to scream begging for the shouting to stop. I kept waiting, she never did scream. That night, in my blog, I screamed for her.
One month ago I went into my drafts and finally finished a piece I started six years ago. I told my friend’s 14-year-old sister she wasn’t fat knowing very well that my validation will do nothing for her. At this point, no one’s validation can stop her from drowning. I’ve been that 14-year-old. We all have. I conclude my piece with the idea that self-doubt doesn’t really go away as we grow, we just become busier people. At the end of the day, we’re all pretending we aren’t still 14.
Three weeks ago I wrote a description of woman I saw at a park in Germany when I was 16. Each time I look back at that moment, it seems to change. At first she was just a woman crying at a park. When I was 18, she seemed so lonely that she had to cry at a park. At 20, she was so ignored that a stranger’s attention was good enough. At 21, I figured she was hiding from an abusive husband or maybe an ignorant mother in the open. Her home, was the strange place.
One week ago I wrote a paragraph about man I met while I was fighting time. He made of me a blushing teenager – so in love with the idea of love, the reckless kind. He knows I’m crazy, I think he’ll save me. Three sentences in, I stopped myself from writing further. This time I’m not going to try to finish it, this story isn’t going to be mine to write, I want it to be out of my control. I’m finally okay with that. It still lays in a black little notebook, unfinished. I can’t help but think how rarely incomplete art tells a happy story.
During the day, these are the things I write about. The people I meet, the stories they tell and what they do to me. This is what my work is made of. How words can pull one in, show them a story and give birth to emotion. And it could be anything – the life of a stranger, child, teenager, woman or even man.
But if you catch hold of me in the dead middle of the night and cut me open, you will find a little girl who is questioning it all. Do I see you in the desperation of an addict? In the screams of a quiet child? In the loneliness an insecure teenager? Or Do I go looking for you in the hands of a crying woman? In the presence a man I can’t wait to fall in love with?
I do not know.
I don’t write about you. Not anymore.
Almost Like the Blues. 