Main Street Magazine Spring '23

all of this? How in a universe so vast, should I even care about a life so tiny
as mine!? I write to prove to them that we do matter. I tell them to watch my
energy shift when my best friend laughs so hard she screams and grabs
my shoulders. To feel my heart turn 360 degrees when I hear my partner
running up the stairs two steps at a time. I point out how the edges of my
lips curl into a smile when I step onto my deck on an early July morning. I
write to discover what really makes me happy, rather than what I am failing
to convince myself does.
And I write to win hide and seek against the little girl I lost so many years
ago. I explore the parts of my brain that have the best hiding places: under
floorboards; beneath wallpaper; tucked behind ceiling tiles. I want to tell
her, baby me with my Shirley Temple curls, my constellation freckles, in
dad’s t-shirts and my pink-polka-dotted muck boots that she will be okay. I
write to hug her with my words, to give her the love she could never find in
that old house, even with all of its secret trap doors.
And I write, because, at the end of the day, I am not permanent. I am as
fleeting as a garden rose and as fragile as a robin’s egg. I am a beautiful
red, orange, and yellow leaf, hanging onto my tree by a single thread. I will
drift, float, fly, and fall onto Earth, where I will crumble, and sink into the
dirt.
But my words exist to outlive me.
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