In a Shoebox, Hidden

A scratch-off in a frame. A black beaded bracelet. A server's ticket. A scratch-away picture of a buddha. A brown corded necklace with a large stone. A post-it note with a 3 scribbled on it. All in a small pile on my bed. All moving into a shoebox.

These are all just things, I think. They don't mean anything.

If I say it enough, I'll believe it.

I guess.

The kettle is humming away on the stove. Gurgling and steaming. I imagine it will be screaming before long. I close the shoebox, slide it under the bed, exhale, and head into the kitchen.

Ants in my bones. A sort of ache to be out in the world, living and growing. Smiling and building. I never know where to start. That's always been my problem. Once I know the path, everything is easy for me. Once I understand where to begin, there isn't any stopping me. I just never know where to begin. I can never see that first step. So I end up pacing. Ancy. Wasting days and hours. Forcing myself into familiar habits. Writing, painting, music. Things I have caught myself doing without realizing it. Things I know so well I am nearly convinced they are more me than the body I'm trapped in.

Pour the water into a mug. Teabag in. Bring it out to the desk and stare at the cursor on the screen. Just a pile of unpublished writing about people who don't like to be written about. Great gaps in my timeline where only they existed. Memories and hopes and joy and loss. All my experience and all I hold close to me, and all hidden away from the world. Someday maybe someone will find it. Read it. After I'm gone, whenever that is. But while I have control, no one ever will. There is a melancholy to it, but in some corner of this cavernous skull I do like the idea that there are these flashes of beauty in my life that only I (we) know about.

I begin a new post. 

Stare at the cursor.

"All you have to do is write one true sentence," Hemingway once said. "Write the truest sentence you know."

I type it out. 

It says too much. I delete it.

Stare at the cursor. My mind is wrapped around it, the now deleted sentence, and everything it said. I've written enough about that. The pile of unpublished writing.

Stare at the cursor. 

Type more truths. Delete them. 

I can't seem to think about anything else.

Okay, I think. Maybe what I'm feeling isn't the only true thing. What am I doing? Is there truth in that?

There is. 

There is and it still says quite a lot, but I type it;

"A scratch-off in a frame..."