To Be Alone
Being a voice for the voiceless can sometimes be the loneliest journey
It starts with a dance. A dance in your room alone. Windows open, the same words on repeat, the same melody on replay. When the world can’t see you there is no risk in leaving your glass pane open, your curtains undrawn and your body vulnerable. As a writer you are not seen — you are heard.
You do a puzzle, another solitary activity; you read a few chapters of a book, you write a few chapters of your book and then you look in the mirror and you wonder how if you can see your nose, your eyes, your hair, and your teeth then why can’t anybody else?
Of course, you make the most noise: your prose makes people think, your articles make people debate and your poetry has stopped a heart or two but do they really see you as anything else but a faceless typewriter. An adapter, translating pain they themselves don’t know how to express into plain English words.
You’ve tried making friends. But they don’t really see it. They don’t see the injustices that have you up typing furiously at 2 a.m., they don’t see the vision of the feminist retelling of Cleopatra’s story, they do not want or relate to a job where the main qualification is an ability and an often unwanted need to be alone.
