Holding More Than I Can Write
I’m not searching for things to write about.
They find me.
A book presses itself into my chest and doesn’t apologise.
A feeling stays long after the moment ends,
as if it has nowhere else to go.
A trip returns in fragments —
skin remembering light,
breath remembering stillness.
A conversation lingers like a wound that closed too fast.
A version of myself waits close,
hovering at the edge of language,
refusing to leave.
This isn’t intention.
It’s recognition.
Like something I once loved
went quiet,
and has come back
to see if I will finally let it stay.
I’m not restless.
I’m awake.
Awake in a way that strips me.
In a way that makes everything feel too close,
too vivid,
too intimate to look away from.
The world leans in.
Even ordinary moments feel charged.
My chest is full —
tight —
aching with more than I know how to carry.
I want to write everything.
Not to capture it.
To survive it.
As if putting it into words
might stop it from breaking me open.
But this isn’t something to be emptied.
This is attention returning to the body
after years of being ignored.
Maybe this is what purpose looks like
when it’s done asking for permission.
Not loud.
Not gentle.
Just there.
Unavoidable.
Staying.
I don’t need to write everything now.
I need to stay with the wanting —
even when it scares me.
For a long time, that wanting disappeared.
Or maybe I learned how to live without it.
Now it’s here again —
steady, intimate, undeniable —
settling heavy in my chest.
Here is the line I usually avoid:
Sometimes it feels like my chest is holding a grief I never named
and a desire I don’t know how to release.
So I don’t rush it.
I don’t turn it into clarity.
I don’t make it useful.
I don’t ask it to behave.
I write slowly.
I let myself feel everything I once muted.
I let the ache stay
right where it insists on living —
and trust
that this trembling,
this unbearable aliveness,
this refusal to be quiet
is not a problem to solve,
but the truest sign
that I am still becoming.
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