“I don’t know how I could exist if I did not write,” quoting myself here. And I wrote those words to H and later to AM, but this is about me, not them. I write because I like to talk but there aren’t enough people to talk to in person in my life. I write because I have a million things that I want to say to R, but I can’t text him in the middle of the night. I write because my imagination is over-active. I write because it’s natural. Will Stafford was once asked in an interview when he became a writer, he answered that the question should really be when did everyone else stop being writers? There is truth in that. Children are master story tellers and as soon as they learn to make marks on paper, they start to put those stories down on paper. The same is true regarding art, but I digress, this is about writing, but isn’t writing art? I don’t think that I write my poems, my heart writes them, but am I not my heart? I used to say that R was my heart, maybe he is. Does that mean I am R? Maybe soul mates are really pieces that fit together to form a larger soul. Stick to the topic at hand, B. I write because… I write because I exist. Wow, that was deep, yet really simple. I write because I exist. I write because I love, because I dance, because I cry, because I read, because I hike up to abandoned houses with guys I secretly wish I could have sex with, except it’s not so much a secret anymore and it’s only one guy, not guys plural. I write because I see beauty but don’t feel confident with a paint brush. I write because God gave me the words to do so. I write because I am a poem written by God. I write because R loved me with all of his heart for a time and because R still loves me with a little sliver of that same heart, the heart that used to be named after me. I write because people read. I write because I laugh. I write because I like to dress up. I write because I go to school. I write because I want to be a teacher. I write because I want to be like Jesus. I write because I am a mom. I write because words consume me. I write because I am afraid of fire. I write because I want to tell the truth. I write because I can’t tell the truth. I write to see my soul in print. I write I write I write. And I said before that I had never read any of Sylvia Plath’s words, well now I have, she wrote too.
“I write only because
There is a voice within me
That will not be still”
— Sylvia Plath
Anonymous in Cali 