At Least They're Committed

I promised him I’d start writing again, maybe digging out all of my old stuff and putting it on the blog for posterity — the good the bad and the otherwise.

“I wrote a young adult fiction novel,” I’d told him between sighs and small sobs a couple months back. “I was thinking maybe I should pull it out and start revising it.”

Brilliant! He said.

But digging through the shelves of weathered papers that have miraculously made their way from apartment to apartment and house to house year upon year upon year, I found something else: Poorly typewritten pages of stories; of assignments from college; of dark nights sitting alone in the dark save for a candle over the keys . . . some stories of which I don’t even remember, none of which are very good. Most barely spark my interest. 1987, they all say. That and Gabriel, Gabriel, Gabriel . . . Gabriel. Whoa!? How long have I cleaved to Gabriel? How long has this gone on? I didn’t remember, not all of it. Why the fascination? I began writing of it 23 years ago; I began living it well before.

Page upon page upon fragile, yellowed page. I stand up and look in the mirror and do not recognize my reflection. My own words, cryptic and young, make me dizzy and fatigued. I have no idea . . . no idea.