Why do I write?

There are these open spaces inside me. When they yearn, I pick up a pen.

I write like I am in need because I am. If I had someone to tell these random stories to, would I be talking to you?

Yes. Yes, I would.

There are these open spaces inside me. When they yearn, I pick up a pen. I unlock pages of vocabulary in search of words to paint what my eyes see. Somehow, it is not enough for me to see. I want you to see too.

I know that I do this for you, too. If I were vain, I would think myself a superhero. But I am not either. These ideas in my head need closure, and they fight for space. When they knock, I become the mother whose child has refused to sleep—I get no sleep. When I write, I lay them to rest. I allow them a footprint in history. I prove their importance. For not all ideas can rile me to the suffering of painful, patient articulation. They can say, ‘I wasn’t just a wandering thought. She cut me open, sewed me up, snapped my limbs and finally, presented me whole to be seen. And then all the others who felt the same way but did not know how to say it could use her words.’

If not a superhero, then perhaps a freedom fighter. For what could be more liberating than an end to the agony of a lack of expression: ‘I don’t know how to say this.’

I write too because my tongue is often tied and my brain is slow. And when something happens to me, I can only take it in word by word. One sentence after another—who said what, who did that, why all these? Only after these can I relieve or forgive and forget. I write because words abound, but they are rarely enough, and I cannot live with only saying ‘You are beautiful.’ I want to tell you that your eyes make me think of being under a warm blanket on a cold, rainy morning. I want to let you know that your presence is like a balm that soothes me in places I did not know needed healing.

I write because I forget things and resolutions and resolves. I want to do a million things, but I can really only do one, and that is if I write it down.

More than anything, I write because I can.

— Maranatha MMXXI.