storybooks

Tethered and worn

Ink has been pressed upon each side

Making the page feel like a softer version of braille as my fingers run over the letters

Feelings piercing senses and

Awakening memories

 

As I touch words like "joy,” "grow," "scared," "interview," and "love," 

I feel captivated by the blue and black and purple color in which I wrote them once"

The difference in appearance between a phrase scribbled with anxiety and one with a calm spirit

 

I started at the end of July when it was hot and the leaves were bright and my skin was tan and my mind was comfortable

Now it’s November and my legs break out in tiny armies of goose bumps far too easily  

 

Cold hands, barely freckled, don’t hold their rings as well

Shivering in my room, brain on “high”

like the heater pacing around my soul keeping me warm, keeping me safe, holding my rings

 

Yet, still, there is more brown paper, much more space

To feel joy, to grow, to be scared, to have more interviews, to have more loves

 

I write to record and reminiscence

I write to free and forget

I write my life like stories in a book with no ending

 

November 17^th, 2016. Rotate that 6 and you have a 9 and a mind floating,

wondering where she will have washed up to by then 

‘cause 9 could be a raft, but also a doomful pit

and I’m wondering…maybe that hole holds my answers

 

But I’m still so worried about losing my jade ring

I’m still so worried about so many things

 

But the brown paper that’s empty reminds me that I am not

And their blank lines whisper to me

Nodes of hope from stories that have yet to be written  

 

Everything, everything, everything known already

except to me

 

fresh and anew, I look forward to the blankness of my stories  

and the places my hands will write them in