These Words Will Never Make Me Famous

I have gathered and brought home photographs from places I have been. From San Francisco to New York. In fact, San Francisco is made entirely of memory - photographs of days when my life truly mattered. It is almost laughable at this point to say I have come further than ever – when I feel a sinking at times like stone to sea.

In reality, this city that I lie my head in, this arboretum and garden of unmarked graves is nothing more for me than just limbo, where I fight for air space, but never really breathe. I feel that I definitely belong to an appendage of people that became artists to release some sort of inner language that speaks in tongues, and the only way to describe the feeling is to attempt to put it to word on paper or in a preferred journal.

I have a gift made entirely out of train wrecks and circumstances, but I have not established it, or have initiated only fragments - the remaining delay leaving, shift against bristle, never really willing to tell the prodigy of ‘me’. Not that there is anything to tell, but some may implore to be at variance; some have blisters on the soles of their feet from walking beside me.

Maybe I am extinct, only a creation in my mind, constructed of a softness that falters during the changing season – the harrowing waters that hold chin to seedling; stones and landscapes that can never be found after the photograph burns.

At other times and in other spaces, I am a liar. I do not fabricate much, but I have been known to tell myself a story or two; I fool my effort into oblivion each time my lips refute my surroundings, each time I tell myself of a deeper love story that should never fall short. And after calamity, I carve an alter for a totem pole made from past lovers, fancy the color red over black, and dip the eyes. There above the plot of this city I stand back and respect my work – I close my eyes and imagine a draw between myself and others. I believe that the sky might look down and dry the colors or perhaps blur them with a future rain. I never was one for calling on the names or retrieving paper notes from my backpack, to squall in the goodbyes that grew.

It is possible that this is not lament or a stone that I expect to throw. It is also wise to consider the lengths of bamboo that have covered the path that I once held dear. But to a writer, maybe it means a way of condensing the view, if only for a moment so he or she might feel the tightening of chest to swallow, or on a related note – the passing of an era. In any case I do not weep solely and sometimes not at all. And I do not engage in hysterical laughter, (even though it is said to cleanse the psyche). I do nothing at all, but write, and these words mean nothing to most.


-Cherilyn