I'm setting out here to do something I have never done. I'm setting out to prove, mainly to myself, that I can write something powerful and moving without it sounding ironic and forced.
I might fail.
"My greatest flaw as a writer is that I write the way that I think. As if in constant conversation with myself. On occasion, I bring an audience in on it and there's a lot of mess involving paper and ink and shared shame.
We talk like friends and I confess to you my secrets and ideas and show the tattered, glued scraps of construction paper that informs my life. We could make a kite out of it. But at the end, and it always ends, I sit back and listen to the echoes folding back on themselves. On my best days, I can pretend this is a second voice, rising in answer to my words. Shared understanding.
On my worst days, I know it is my own voice and I'm rereading and isn't writing so lonely? And isn't it a shame the only way I know how to connect with my world is through a form of expression that must always. Be. Alone.
"That's a lot of writing for a smoke break." Says my friend as he reads it over after returning from the cold outside. "But that's all I want to say about it, I think."
"Fair enough." I answer. "And point in case."
