MarilynYocum.com

I found this post in the ash heap of my drafts folder.
Written last August.

* * *

SOMEWHERE ALONG I-85,
en route to Atlanta,
I wonder where I left off
with the story I am sharing
and what to write next.

I’m all done, I decide.
I don’t have anything else I want to say.

But then, right away, comes this other thought:

It’s not about whether you have anything to say.
What about the child?
Does she have anything else she wants to say?

And see here?
This is just the kind of nutsiness
that goes on
when you write,
and the reason,
I’m convinced,
some of us
are well along in years
before conceding we are writers,
not wanting to associate ourselves
with nutsiness beyond
that which has already been thrust upon us
by the actions of others.

I’m only half-joking.

Young, I heard the word ‘writer’
and imagined
Hemingway
in a garret
with a bottle.

Not my life’s dream, that.

Of course,
now I know
loads of writers
with neither garrets nor bottles.

It’s especially difficult
in a home with dysfunction
to see your wiring,
what with all the mirrors that might reflect it
standing cockeyed.

Child of Alcoholic Series