Maybe, Poetry.
Someone once told me that my poems feel like tenderness. I really liked that.
But it’s been a long time, too long, since I’ve been brave enough to write poetry again.
I long to feel the tenderness again of one of my poems. To be wrapped up in it, once it’s written, like a mother’s embrace.
But the actual act of writing - (teasing apart the vowels, drawing them out from pain, and trying to make something beautiful from all of that ruin )— is painful.
To me, poetry is the process of writing. And I suffer it.
I don’t remember a time when I didn’t write. It’s as much a part of me as breathing (or drinking South African wine).
I often call poetry my first love, perhaps my only true love, because she does not judge me for my lack of makeup, nor criticize my absence and the string of unanswered phone calls and texts.
Instead, when I do come around next, she lays her pages bare and waits for me to have my way with her.
“I’ve missed you,” I say, and she lays there, in an unshameful entangled mess, lighting up a cigarette and stroking my hair.
“I’ve never left you my, darling. I’ve always been here.” she answers.
I love her with a desperation that clings to me. She is something I know I have to surrender in order to truly have. But I know she will never leave me, no matter how much I hurt her. Though, she can be spiteful.
Whenever I forget, she reminds me: The muse belongs to no one and instead, I am her prisoner.
When I whisper her name “Caliope” she will appear to me as beautiful and bountiful as she was when I first met her at 4 years old.
Whenever I’ve been gone for too long, and lost my reverence for writing, she always reminds me. She arrives and frees the words from my throat.
In all my ruin, I know she will look at me, like she always does, as though I’ve just returned from war and say “You are not as broken as you think,” and welcome me back into her bosom.
And when I leave tomorrow, as a lover always does, I know my heart will break again and I will say the prayer I always do “Please dear God, or Gods, whoever is listening, don’t take me from her.” And I will make a vow to treat her better next time.
But I rarely do.
So anyway, after all that, here I am again.
Suffering writing and creating tenderness.
If you've enjoyed reading this, check out my article called Writers Write, where I share my struggles with writing (and not writing) and some references for inspiration.
