I’ve taken Facebook off my phone.
I have challenged myself to only check it for family news every now and then, and make minimal business postings from a shared computer.
I visit it every other day or two, maybe three.
I needed it for a while to fill the spaces when I was recovering from a serious neck injury last year.
I missed my friends and family and being connected to them dulled the fear of perhaps not waking up to see their faces again, nor hear their voices, nor read their words, nor write them one more message of love from me.
But it is now taking me from what I came here to do.
To write, and to write honestly.
I love writing!
I didn’t know how much so!
My writing has been my lifesaver.
I wrote poems to my parents when I needed to express my love and gratitude for them…or if I wanted a new puppy.
I wrote letters to penpals and far away boyfriends that I longed for.
I wrote my first song when I was fourteen on an old, cut-off, twelve-string guitar that my brother gave me.
I sang my feelings out like prayers to the Universe at a Southern Sunday morning revival!
Expressing love, expressing fear, expressing distorted and evolving conceptions of society that felt so wrong.
Looking back, I now realize how my writing carried me through times I felt I could not carry myself.
And now, as I allow the quiet thoughts to take me to the places I have overlooked while being distracted, I feel so free!
Free to be me. Free to say what I’ve come here to say. My way.
My art of writing is becoming more alive in me with every tap of the keyboard and, better yet, the acidric smell of ink on paper awakens senses in my mind and body that I have been shy of, or afraid of , letting others see.
Oh, the balm of writing!
When thoughts trickle past your ear, to your shoulder, down your arm, into your hand urging a crazy dancing pen to create images through word.
My emotions and thoughts made visible.
I carry a pen with me at all times, and any paper surface will do just in case a line or two or three may drop in to visit me.
Ground berries to stone walls.
Coal to parchment.
Pen to paper.
I feel the burning pulse in my temples increase as every whisper and vision weaves its story like a pattern of delicate lace, or a jagged burning scar into the imagination of my reader.
I am baring my mind in swirls and figures so personal that I sit out of breath, tapped of my misery and elated from my glee…
There it is.
My mind and my heart on paper.
So bare.
So tangible.
Naked and vulnerable.
My thoughts spilled before me
for the whole world to read.
Dare I let them?
Oh, for some
unseen, nagging calling,
I must let them.
Some will embrace them.
Some will erase them.
Some will revile them.
Some will desire them.
I may panic and guard them.
Hide them.
Store them.
Sweep them up to protect them.
Try to forget them.
But they do not forget me.
They are mine for a reason.
Whether hopeful or treason.
And no matter the season
leave a hole
that is freezin
my heart
and my pen
if I lent.
So, I’ll leave space for a while…
and I’ll clean out old files
of chalk boards and pencils,
of memories and stencils
of pre-molded formats
I am told,
I must fill
to be read.
They are not mine!
They’re not me!
Never were!
I will let the calm seize me,
the words to pour from me;
the path is so clear
I must tread!
Turning off all the noises
turning up inner voices
those of thought and of thinking
of eyes without blinking
to tell this love story
of life
after death.
I will dust off old pages,
quench all the rages,
of life’s simple stages
and truth’s double dares.
And I’ll buy a new notebook.
Write a new outlook
with words,
pen on paper
instead.
.
With Love and Light,
Truth and Dare,
Colleen
