On the excuse of writing

if i stop writing, the silence grows teeth-sharp edged and brutal,

presses its jagged teeth onto my face

gnawing at the edges of myself, the void stretches out,

but when i have written, it has not quite cradled me,

it has peeled me apart layer by layer-

there is something feral about this act of putting words down,

something desperate, like throwing stones at an approaching storm

that I let happen, because I don’t know how to stop.

what if, just once, words came like rain,

unbidden, washing the grime of purpose away?

Not born to tether me here,

to be a flimsy barricade against

the howl inside—

but simply to be.

what if, just once,

my words were not a frantic stitching of wounds,

and they were not a haphazard attempt to keep myself from unraveling

i wish they existed,

because they can,

because they have no reason not to-ink for ink’s sake,

but its purpose is burdened by the weight of-

what I can not say out loud

but my sentences feel like a scaffold i am climbing,

though i don’t know if it is to escape or to leap.

although the pages don’t judge, but it doesn’t forgive either-

simply holding whatever i pour into, indifferent to

whether it saves me or breaks

you see, the act of writing is an autopsy of yourself

you are the blade and the body

and you are slicing yourself to name the things are killing you

but the shapes of the letters dissolve as soon as you see them,

and you are left with the ache of having tried

(see how I have changed the pronoun to you–

to speak through your mouth)

if i stop writing, i will collapse inwards as a carcass that

even despair will abandon.