I want to be a writer, I say, and I mean it
not in the sense that I am stringing words together, necklace beads and daisy chains—
the language is a beautiful part of it, of course, but I think it is more so the pain, see,
the daisies I pluck and weave had to spring forth from somewhere.
Before the soil was gently patted down and watered someone had to
ravage it, turn it inside out so the rich smell of loam rose into the air
like it was beckoning the sky to cry. All creation must happen like this,
because before creation there is void
and a wanting, like how Adam needed a warm body next to his so God dug fingers
deep into flesh and pulled until he heard a crack—
readers recognize writers, I think, like how Adam recognizes his rib.
He runs his palm over Eve’s side and feels the ridge under smooth skin, and he thinks to
himself that if God had not done it first
he would have tried. Oh, he would have tried, and what I mean to say is
do you ever feel that itch within yourself, whispering that the only way to appease it
is committing some sort of violence? The soil does not forget
what it took to make the flower, and the flower can never undo
the snap of its stem, and when I write
my fingers stick together, grass stains and sugar sap,
ichor and marrow, so that I can hardly tell where the wound ends and the garden
begins. Better to cultivate than to swallow down the pain. Better to feel the flesh-blood
warmth
than to feel nothing within you at all.
