I am communing with my inner self,

We are having tea,

Chatting about topics only we care about and are excited about.

It’s nice to get on paper the things we care about,

So we can see later,

When we’ve forgotten,

Out there in the dizzy world.

I write to feel less alone.

To clarify my own voice and thoughts into something more concrete.

I write to remember.

I write to forget.

To explore.

Writing helps me share who I am,

How I think,

What I feel.

I write to distract myself from where I am,

To go somewhere old or new.

I write to laugh and cry and be human.

I write to try to understand how other people feel.

When I don’t write,

My mind feels like a file cabinet

With too many papers shoved in.

When I don’t write,

I forget my voice.

My thoughts fall out of my mind

Like a bottomless hourglass.

I write because poets are cool,

Writers - majestic.

I write because my handwriting tells its own story.

I write to tell my own story.

I write when I’m too in love,

Or too angry, or too sad, excited,

To do anything else.

I’ve written poems to explain how I feel when I had no other way.

I write to get it all out.

I write to fall in love,

In love with writing,

In love with myself.

I learn to be on my own side.

To answer my own questions.

I control the story, the pacing, the setting.

I can leave at any time.

I write because I roller skate,

And because I’m human,

And because Eva Cassidy died too young.

I might too.

Or I might get 60+ years to perfect a craft I love,

To keep seeing the world in new light.

To keep seeing the world become new again,

In each tiny moment -

Find the uniqueness and the universal,

And merge them until everything is both.