“1. When you write, who do you speak for? Who are you speaking to? What impact do you want your writing to have?

2. How do you want to be remembered as a writer, and as a human? 

3. What would you write about if fear wasn’t a factor? What stories would you tell?”

—Writing Our Way Out: Writer’s Talk with Ehime Ora and Billy Chapata

I’m still figuring out my answers to those prompts, but I do know that I want to be okay with not having all the answers, with living my paradoxes & my questions 

being both whole & a container

terrified of fire & willing/looking/wanting to run through it

as so moved by the things that move me that it renders me fragile and yet somehow brass bound & unbreakable as very very too & always human 

softest metal

and if fear wasn’t a factor I’d write about the 17,546 different ways that my heart breaks on a daily

I’d write to & about all the things that have eroded valves & torn through muscle

I’d put all my burgundy dirty band aids & my rusty jars of tears on display 

simply because they’re mine

and paint my pain until the brush broke

simply because I can 

but I’d also dare to write my prayers, my saving graces, my breakthroughs, my hope

all the things that have been a thick salve for my heart and allowed it to survive even the harshest winters and worst conditions 

how it beats & pumps blood even when covered in soot & rust

I’d write all the things that keep my blood red 

and make paint 

“you don’t have to use all the words, you don’t even have to use the perfect words. you just have to tell your truth”

and be brave enough to live it and feel it too