Member-only story
Believe Me, I Wanted To Tell You A Story
Spoiler alert: I couldn’t do it.
I was supposed to tell you a story. Lead you by a noose, a rope, or a gentle hand guiding you in and through my world because people often get lost in it. I had my cruise director hat on — you have to believe this — but I couldn’t do it. I even tried cribbing from my older stories when I was in a similar space but the graft wouldn’t take. I kept re-reading the words I’d written, angry about how fucking good I was then and how paltry I feel now. I wanted to lead you through the ocean even though our lungs filled with seawater, drag you kicking and screaming in the all-caps way we tend to speak now through the smoke and haze and bales of fire so you’d see it, feel it, a fraction of how I feel. But I couldn’t do it.
Better to leave you there. Outside. You carry their own dark, bear the wounds you’re forever redressing. Why should I, a stranger, stick a poker and prod at you, break the skin? Just because I can. Just because up until today writing essays came easily to me.
Lately, not so much. Lately, I stare at blank screens and play old music and wail like a fucking child, though I’ve never been the Puffs Plus type. Yesterday, a postal worker caught me mid-wail — he’d heard me through the window — and asked if everything was okay. Did I need something. He took off his mask…
