Streaming Water

This year, like this time last, words were not typed on the daily, as the participating group expects. I’ve learned a few things about my writing habits. Typically, I produce work when it is unexpected - my best work. The excitement around NaNoWriMo in November is infectious, and I’m happy to join others around the world. But, I wonder why I just don’t write to write it down.

Perhaps I write because I forget memories. Maybe, this is not meant to be read by others. When I think of writers, the classical ones, their lives are rich with thought and expression. They experience turmoil and deep connection (or, disconnect) with life and living. They draw from it and keep on until all sides of their stories burning within are exposed.

I’ve done the thing. Thought upon thoughts emersed by scattered ideas. Only to make known a small percentage of what burns within. It’s water through my fingers. I see water, I feel the water, but I cannot hold the water. I cannot reshape it. I lose sight and am confused by the rapid, fragmented string of words.

         

I regret all that I did for love. Things never done before and likely will never do again. He hindered, caused me to doubt my uniqueness and power, needed me small at his side. He is a tornado. Exciting and destructive. In the middle of his roar and thunder, there is a single pocket of bright, beautiful calm. He’s the loneliest person I’ve ever known. He’ll break you so that he isn’t alone.

I’m torn between him leaving and disappearing across state lines, deep into international waters never to be heard or seen from again, or seek justice and impose the punishment he’s earned. I don’t know which is better or worse to know or not know where he is all of the time. I’m in danger of his explosive and quiet violence, either way.

A lesson I learned long before he crossed my path is that love, pain, anger, and everything else is felt until it is not. No timetable exists. No end in sight until you reach it. And, there is no escaping. There is only living through it. Embracing the scars as evidence of life.

**

A performance against domestic violence.