So Many Things

“But the life of a poem is inextricably tied to the voice of a poet. Your voice is the womb for your words.”

I struggle to be, aspire to be, and want to be everything. Stepping into a particular cloth or character is hard. Who I am usually resists who a story asks me to become. But isn’t that life? Self-awareness is a burden.

A woman desires you to be the voice most familiar to her heart’s ears. She will fall in love with the character love made you become. And love asks us to be something for the things we love. How durable and enduring are the characters we nurture? The characters that sacred spaces, passions, and communities call to the forefront.

I write these words as a graduate student, struggling to be a researcher, fighting to be a poet, hoping to remain a writer. But it is in the period of not yet being where I study and learn the flesh of who I am becoming. Pray for me.

We must make ourselves able to live, endure, and perform longer for the sake of becoming. Hold it. Stay in it. Sit in it. Allow yourself to take other forms. The hands of community can mold you, outwardly, without damaging or fracturing the inside of the pot made of clay that you call you.

For the reasons mentioned, poetry has been heavy. A burden I prayed would come in the form of a blessing. The thought of performing puts me at odds with my own words. But the life expectancy of a poem is inextricably tied to the voice of a poet. Your voice is the womb for your words.

Now, I read aloud when I write. I must write words that are light on my tongue. My voice puts its hands on pages and rearranges words to suit itself. Now, I must be what I write. But I feel more connected to my words now than I ever have. I don’t write what has not, at some point, been in my veins.

Your characters are only as real as your willingness to be them for a moment. Poetry is a sketch of who we are and a prophecy of who we will become. It wraps its hands around our throats and begs us to speak it into life.

Poetry must be made flesh, or it will remain dry bones on paper, weighing down pages until we fill it with fresh breath. Poets must become words just as the poet writes them. The writer’s breath needs to create lungs and breath out of pages.

I am, so many people. So many things. But I will become, all of us.

Told by: Kwon