This one just kind of appeared, but I do like it. I have literally no idea where it came from, but it’s here and it’s good, so…

The world is nothing more than an elaborate game of make-believe. I pass the neighbours on my way to the newsstand to check the paper. They’re a family of three, playing house like a couple of five year olds, a happy little lie. The headlines are the same ones they’ve been for a year, politicians swearing up and down that they know what they’re doing, turning a blind eye to the fact that the earth’s slowly setting itself on fire. At work Clara pretends to work because she loves it while calculating how many hours she has to work today keep her stomach from gnawing a hole through her body. Jake hides a broken past behind a smile and a coffee mug filled with whiskey. I clock out early, mumbling something that’s as far from the truth as I can get, and meet you down by the river. We lay down in the grass and when I asked you if you were comfortable, you lied and smiled your answer. That night, for just a moment, I let myself pretend you loved me. We let our lies hang in the air as I fell asleep in your arms. When I woke up, you were gone.

Yayyyyy three years of keeping up this blog! I’m so happy! I’ve been looking back and seeing how my writing’s changed, and I really do think I’ve gotten much much better. My style has changed quite a bit, but I think it shows the growth I’ve gone through. Anyways, this was based off a writer on Tumblr’s work, and I really liked the idea as my piece for the three year anniversary, so please enjoy. It’s kind of crowded with ideas, but it’s basically what the inside of my brain looks like, so…..

I write poetry because there’s a cacophony in my brain which can only be coaxed out with a piece of paper and ink. I write poetry because there are constellations in everything I see, and all I have ever wanted to do is to draw them out on paper, but I’m no good at art. I write poetry because people ask me if I’ve ever been in love and I can’t find the words to answer them. I write poetry because love exists, and it doesn’t, and it has broken the hearts of far too many. I write poetry because the universe is infinite and we might as well not exist. I write because everything has an expiration date, and because even memories leave us in time. I write because I see in metaphors and feel in colours, and because the earth is filled with words no one sees. I write because roses say love and daisies speak in innocence. I write because memories can be good or bad or tainted or pure, and because electricity can power a lightbulb or a brain. I write because burns hurt worse than broken bones. Because there are such things as rainbow mountains and red lakes and volcanoes that can bury whole cities. I write poetry because the earth keeps turning whether or not the world collapsed around us just yesterday. I write because some things never stop hurting. I write because red means anger and blue means sadness and purple means royalty and pink can mean puppy love or the sickening colour of Pepto Bismol. Because people don’t want to die and people don’t want to live but we never really get to choose. Because uncertainty and beauty and exist. Because oftentimes they’re the very same thing. I write because I’m a writer. Because I don’t have a choice. Because I don’t think I could ever be anything else.

I read something like this in Wrecked a few months ago, and it stuck with me. The author really succeeded in creating an atmosphere where the bar was absolutely pulsing with music, and the strange lonely unity that it creates on the floor. I don’t know if I succeeded in the same way, but I kind of like the ending in this one. I think it’s pretty cool.

There’s a pulsing energy in the air. A crowded floor filled with people who’ve forgotten they’re people, who’ve forgotten everything but the music throbbing in their bones. They don’t think, they don’t stress, they don’t stop. They just keep moving. They dance, ignoring where the others go, closing their eyes and merging with the crowd. They focus on their hearts beginning to beat in time with the bass, pounding in their ears and moving their bodies together. In this room, everyone has a foggy mind and rhythm in their veins. They are somehow alone in their own worlds and united at once by the power of the mind-numbingly loud beat they all hear. They see some commotion by the bar. They see her pushing him away. They see him get angry. They don’t think, they don’t stress, they don’t stop. They just keep moving.

Okay so there’s this thing that sometimes happens where when people are afflicted with a certain type of dementia, as their mental state gets worse, they randomly learn the ability to make some sort of art without any sort of training. It’s super weird, but I read a book about it called one thing stolen a year or so ago, and wrote a random thing in a sleepy stupor. I really like it! (Also, for the last time, the correct spelling is C O L O U R!)

A mind swirling with ideas of what could have been, might have been, and wasn’t. They call this insanity, when you go in circles, again and again and again, never ceasing to recognize that the tree you just pointed out now knows your name, age, and how many sunflowers you painted on your wall.

Too much beauty can cause no harm, they say, but what happens when the loveliness corrupts the brain, eating it from the inside out, so that all you know is the art of insanity? What happens when your mind is suffocated by the glamour of colour, when all your fingers know is the creation of beauty, and all your head can think is more, more, more?

Beauty has its charm, but when it is the one chant repeated over and over and over in a mind, throbbing as though bursting free, we accept that it becomes a poison.

What if you were granted the ability to make the most beautiful and haunting masterpieces the world has seen, and in exchange, you would have your mind stolen from you forever?

One thing stolen, for magical fingers set to create more beauty in the world.

Is it worth it?