Beauty Seen is Never Lost

“20 Authors under 40” – profile photos depicting the illustrations of those who inked it down, somewhere between their medical school training and insurance jobs. My mind scans in detail - that high collared shirt, that African American afro, that copper necklace.
Writers, I know them – there’s depth in every facet, there’s meaning in purchase choices, there’s a stretch of possibility, there’s a story, there’s a plot right there. There are words in a salesman’s vest, there are words in Fire alarms and cinema tickets, there are words in the mundane; carpools, laundry rooms, and clinics .I turn the page to the snippets of their interviews.

Where were you born? Washinton D.C
Where do you live now? San Francisco
Where were you born? Lima, Peru
Where do you live now? Oakland, California
Where were you born? Nigeria
Where do you live now? Columbia

In precision, I see them. Moving large pieces of furniture in their new apartments, washing dishes after their dozen takeout orders ran out, and stacking plastic bags into corners.
I see them, walking unto life as if on a straight line, a foreign beginning to an unprecedented end. And I see their words- definite, and new; emerging from inexplicable depths shadowing that straight line they walked on.
One life- and they’ve lived.
One life, and they’ve seen its heights when they waited alone in airports, and skimmed through newspapers with enlarged-metaphors for a name, only writers would scoff at; “ The sun” ,“ The spotlight”, and “ The Voice”.
One life, and they’ve had sharpened pencils everywhere, and they wrote as the neighbor told them about somebody else’s tragedy; and they wrote as they’ve heard ambulances on distant nights, and they wrote as they dropped orange peels from the window, and they wrote as they stepped on sewage systems, and they wrote while it rained, and they wrote some more.

And I envy them some more.
One life, and I walk upon circles.
One life, and I stretch experiences until they break on the rims.
One life, and the potential of words die down inside of me.
One life, and the only certainty I know, is how much I don’t.

Posted by Diddlina at 1:46 AM