sjsprWriting

I believe in words on the back of a greasy diner napkin, scrawled with dirty

fingers and a stringy sense of absolution.

I believe in the colour blue—of indigo and teal, navy and sky. The swell

of grey rain clouds in the early hours of the morning—

tender as the branches that beat against my window and hide me from the taste of sadness outside.

(It tastes like giving up.)

I believe in weakness. I believe in crushing vulnerability; saving myself from

sinking like an anchor into the mud of inadequate words

threads of self-recognition rising through the hazy sickness engorging my ribcage—

there’s shipwreck in them, but it reminds me that I matter, I matter, I matter.

I believe in escaping, sitting on wet cement until my clothes

are soaked and so are my thoughts.

I believe that the mind is a canvas, streaked with the colours of doubt

of forgetting what my parents told me and remembering

only what I told myself.

I believe in “I’m not okay.”

and writing and writing and breathing and choking.

I believe in hatred—thick, gooey, disbelieving. Of holding a grudge

in the palm of my hand, viscous and fluid like mercury tipped

from a thermometer when I was 5 years old and wide-eyed and still curious.

I believe in TV shows and curling up with a blanket to forget,

and holding your mom’s hand because you can, because you want to.

I believe that fiction can teach more about worth,

can burn with the tang of reality, of release,

of promise in the future—something actual.

I believe there are ten thousand ways to say

“I hate you.”

but only one thousand to admit

“I love you.”

Yet I believe in nothing, too, sometimes.

But I guess if I believe that an eagle has a heart even while it spreads its nimble wings

silhouetted in the red-hot rays of the desert sun

then maybe

I have wings too.