When a Woman Writes
Notes on a kitchen table
When a man writes he speaks of violence.
The epic the legendary. Of bleeding out.
Don’t try said Bukowski.
A sentiment I agree with.
But with less aggression.
All of it
with less aggression
for when I write it isn’t blood that spills onto a page, but soul.
Liquid memories.
My grandmother crossed oceans for me to be here forced from a home into new land with unforgiving people ...that is violence.
Not my words on a page.
My words are comfort, are home.
A reflection contorted by a moving stream of water.
Like star dust.
The world contained in letters.
Sure sometimes the sentiment is harsh and rough but beneath its exterior always a softness.
Memory it is soft.
Memory, it fades.
Don’t fool yourself into believing otherwise.
A memory is never fixed.
Only the words like a shadow.
Though shadows morph too.
And so I write …which I suppose involves edge.
But not violence, never violence.
At a kitchen table, like the woman writer before me.
I cook dinner and carve the vegetables with a knife, a precision, an intention.But I slice into a radish not with aggression with care and arrange the pieces on a plate with love with attention
We are told to choose between the lives of words and the life of an artist.
But who is this artist without her life.
We must tear ourselves away from one or the other or balance on the thin thread between them.
My life is my work.
I am a woman who writes at her kitchen table.
The table where I prepare food.
The table is generosity. I don’t know violence to write of. And even if I did, even if I knew of men with daggers in their eyes and pistols for lips, I am not this. Blue nights are a warning, the gloaming hours. I won’t deny this in my words.
But I provide, a nudge, a tug I would never force food into your mouth .
That is not for me to do nor do I wish to.
So I ring the words of their juice and not to total drynessa.
That’s not my place.
I know my place.
I am a woman that writes.
Today I packed my life into boxes. Not a metaphor no. I packed my life into boxes. To move from one house to another .
I shut the door on the old and let it steam behind the walls.
They too will evolve, turn to stories, fondness, nostalgia.
Who I was then and could never be again.
She is locked there.
That’s a sure thing.
A piece of me left behind.
But it’s not sure and nothings sure.
Memories aren’t stagnant.
I am made of them and I change.
Lost parts of myself.
Replaced old with new.
Always new
genius