Reassigning Identity/Maybe Breadloaf Submission

There’s a reason I write, it isn’t amazing, or even original. I write because I can’t do anything else.

I write because in putting my pen to the paper, I can breathe. When I put my pen to the paper, my emotions can become words. Thoughts and feelings, are stenciled into the blue, college ruled lines; the incoherent, jungle gym brain is sorted into categories made of numbers and letters.

                  The fictions that live on my paper and in my mind are all real. Instead of first person, singular pronouns are the third person, singular pronouns. The specific, singular “you”, becomes a general, plural  “you”.

                  I remove myself from the story, yet I’m there in each line. I am the girl ripping open her toes in her black leather dance shoes, while she’s told to be pretty, and to make it look easy.

I’m the girl struggling to hide her sobs behind the shield of her Rapunzel blond hair. I’m that girl, who prefers full words to the abbreviated big brother forms.

                  Then there is you (and you know, that I’m talking to you). You creep in to every rant, each line break, and all the commas. You wrap yourself into my similes and metaphors. You hide behind the theme. But you, you aren’t just you, you are many, you are vous, not tu.

                  The fiction I write is pure and untainted. All “I”s are meant with passion; hatred and love, meant in that moment. “You”s have no value assigned. They are encrypted, safe behind my lock and key.

                  I write, because in writing I’m able to stay sane. I can pour my emotions out on to the page, instead of down into the bottle inside of me.

I write because in writing, I find what I feel.

I write because I want the ink and graphite stain on my smallest finger.

I write, because I want to write.

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