I can breathe out all of it

and nobody has to know, or everybody can know

burdens, dreams

my shifting and tampering and judging

spread out, carbon on paper, font serif or sans-serif

writing makes me hopeful

it is what i fill my half-empty glasses with.

writing concentrates into a spool of string

to weave out the sad, the beautiful moments that my bones work so hard to remember.

I'll play with the ocean that's in my mind

the sandbox, and the wind I thought smelled like wildgrass and cookies meshed together

because only i'll notice.

I write because the words will talk back

when i'm lonely, and will acknowledge my existence in sometimes-

rhythmic, sometimes-legato, free-bird ways

I'll smile, I'll forget--

stuck in a rapture of creativity or numbness or whatever really

--fun

it dissipates the quietness inside me

because I write to make everything okay.