My life’s sentence, thoughts
punctuated and
offset within,
lived as a curl at the end of certainty;
a peak
in voice and tone, a breathless view
from the top
before the sharp drop
down and inward, aimed toward
some small point
within
this time I have served.
[Additional thoughts to spark your writing: Did you read the word as a noun or a verb? How or why have you questioned yourself? What would you ask those who've caused you harm?]
I’m not the best at simplifying language (understatement). And typically, I choose not to, in this work, in this space. (I’m bad at Twitter. Shocking.)
When I sat down to address this first prompt, not as leader but as participant, this is what came out. In examining it, connecting it to the past, I saw that what at first felt like commentary on my (over)use of punctuation was in fact a summary of why I write that way to begin with.
The stories of my childhood (too sensitive, both physically and emotionally; my body a currency, a pawn in my ever-fluctuating worth to others, me fully complicit in my devaluing; love and safety and acceptance are conditional, I must earn every moment; not good enough, never good enough) sent me deep inside myself. I’d have been a writer regardless of the events and dynamics that shaped me. But at any given time, there are four or five fully articulated, parallel thought processes running, and attempting to express in two dimensions becomes absurd. (Guess how many documents and browser windows I’ve got open right now? Nope, too low. Guess again.)
So I write the way I think. I write from the place where I feel safest, where I am the enemy I know. The layers of language are self and shield, all at once. And the words? They’re the cuts I inflict, to heal myself.
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