in restless dreams I walked alone: 2

Since I can remember I’ve been immersing myself into the minds of other people; when I was younger I’d invent a new person for myself to be and let them take over my brain for a day. I used to think that meant I had the makings of an actress but it was really the makings of a writer. I had more characters than I could count ready at my disposal, begging for their stories to be told. I would sneak into corners of rooms and talk to these people and write swatches of stories down in the margins of well-loved books. I started collecting the lives of those I’d imagined around me and soon moved into collecting the lives of those I knew and watched.

When the time came for me to have my own life, I wrote down every detail of what happened to me, experimenting with new words and trying with all my might to capture exactly what every single event in my life felt like. How the summer sunset’s look like melting sherbet wrapped in crushed velvet while the September sun looks like warmed honey seeping out behind the mountains and smelled like marmalade. How my first love’s hands reached at my sides like shy little tree roots, nervous to spread out and claim the forest floor. The more I wrote, the more I read, the more I saw, the more I kissed, the more the words demanded to be let loose onto paper. I felt more like myself when my eyes were peeking out between ink on a page.

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