I will make myself take risks.
A promise and a poem
Making meaningful art requires pushing yourself to take risks and I am tired of confining myself to a box.
recently wrote about pushing past your creative comfort zone. She said:“In pushing our creative edge, we are building our creative selves. We are growing into the work that we admire, that we want to be capable of creating.”
I have lived in a world of shoulds. Telling myself I should write in the ways I know will feel safe. I should write to build comfort. I should dream small.
I am learning to shoulder into the unknown. To find confidence in the possibility instead of complacence in the guaranteed. I don’t want to write to build comfort. I want to write to crack open the world and myself and let the grasp of language hold me in all of its power.
My dreams of writing no longer feel like dreams. They feel like existence.
I am believing more that I have earned the ability to push my creative energy. That this approach to writing is not reserved for some far away cadre of literary brilliance that I cannot reach. That not only am I allowed to strive, but I am obligated to.
I’ve been inspired by
and her work in to allow my writing to absorb me wholly. Writing poetry is one such attempt to feel every inch of my body in language.I’m proud to share it with you.
Your favorite color is anarchy to me
I’ve never been able to answer the question
”What’s your favorite color?”
How could I?
When the deep green pines bursts into emerald
with a turn of the light
and my cat gave me her lush white belly
the moment I arrived home?
When the sunlight danced in orange and pink this morning
and I watched your watery blue eyes absorb every moment
and my new friend’s dead husband still sends his love
from beyond by way of crimson roses?
Or when my niece sees a purple unicorn and her giggles fill every
golden moon I’ve ever seen lying in deep black midnight
surrounded by silvery wisps of universe
that I am lucky enough to imagine?
I can’t choose a favorite color when the little black dress in my closet still
makes me feel like a 21-year-old clobbering the streets the first time she let
herself feel young for real this time
and a tan stretch of concrete reminds me there is no version of myself I ever have to be again unless I choose to.
Don’t ask me to choose my favorite of the spectrum of existence.
I won’t.
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"and a tan stretch of concrete reminds me there is no version of myself I ever have to be again unless I choose to." Love this!
“she let
herself feel young for real this time”
I love this too much - and all the internal emotions we shared with you through the concrete details of the external in this poem on being a color anarchist !—