i hope you don’t mind the lateness of the hour
but sometimes i can’t sleep at night because i am haunted by the knowledge that this life isn’t it for me i see my future unfolding as a series of days and i don’t know that i’ll ever get to where i want to be and it haunts me i spend my days moving stacks of textbooks from one shelf to another and i am an actor i spend my days lifting heavy packages and sorting mail and i am an artist does any of this matter? some months ago, while writing my collaborator made mention of that story about a person walking down the beach throwing sea stars back into the waves it’s especially of interest to me, this story, because i was born on an island and live on an island and every time i sit down to make something i imagine myself, standing at the shoreline, a delicate starfish cupped in my calloused hands and i am the hero of that story but it’s late and i’ve been sad all week, remembering things from the past that i did poorly and things that it’s far far too late to go back and change or apologize for and i am suddenly struck by the feeling that i’m not the person on the beach at all but one of the starfishes, dry and gasping and waiting to be rescued, gently. like a ghost, the knowledge of my smallness haunts me at nights and stands over my bed, making it impossible to sleep so i reach for my phone to text my best friend. at this late hour, i can admit things freely my fingers flying fast across a luminous phone screen things like: i’m scared. i’m scared that i’ll never be successful, whatever that means. i’m scared that people are not interested in my art, my words, my thoughts. i’m scared that i will never become the person that i want to be i am haunted by visions of my future, and the knowledge that there are parallel universes where my left sock is red instead of blue and i have everything that i ever wanted at my fingertips. my best friend is smarter than me, and better, and she always has been so she writes back (many things) and of all of it, i hear this: “life matters, too.” and so maybe it’s enough to strike that fine and flinty matchpoint balance and swallow down one hundred disappointments and show up: not backlit, or on the silver screen, or in a limelight but on sidewalks and roadsides and train station platforms and fields and beaches and wait softly as the tide creeps ever closer.
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April 2023
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