Page 52 - Cha Cha Cha PDF.pdf

STARVED WRITER
Amanda Hoeksema
Our common phrase, “zoning out” means something different to me Than it does to you.
Not once in my life have I “zoned out.”
Because that’s not how I see it.
My mind unstimulated refuses to haze
And swirl slowly like murky water. It does not know the meaning of patience
Or the sensation of stillness.
My mind is like a lit candle sitting in the center
Of a wall-less room
With its flicking flame nipping
At a curtain of shadows
Ever trying to see beyond,
To pull the curtain back,
To know more, to imagine more than
Its single circle of light.
Never have I pinched the wick and zoned out.
I always zone in.
I always heat the flame.
In the wavering light of my candle, I see faces.
Faces with voices and bodies and stories
I’ve created.
I come to them when I slip from myself.
I see and hear them when I zone in.
They are characters leaving
footprints on my brain
And pressing their palms against my skull
Pestering, poking, prodding me for my attention.
Their lives can’t continue without me.
A movie never plays in an empty theater.
I am a starved and starving writer who feeds herself.
Not with paragraphs,
But with stories,
And with characters.
Because you see
In here, flutters pages of wordless novels in candlelight.
Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds
Of pages.
Hours and hours
Of screen time.
In which I have read and written every page.
Watched and directed every scene. But my mind is so keen on keeping each scene seen only by me.
These characters that I have cultivated,
I keep to myself.
Their plots are not for you.
The resonance of their voices flutters to my ears only,
never to know the curvature of letters,
or the confinement of quotation marks.