Don't write.

Don't do it on the bus, on your way to work. Don't do it between bites of your food, on your cellphone. Don't do it late at night, when you can't sleep. Don't write.

Don't scribble notes on a napkin. Don't write about the things you see. And if you do, write? Don't you dare do it honestly. Don't do it brutally or candidly. Don't tell people the truth, don't give it to them raw and uncut. Don't write.

Don't pick up the pen, don't pick up the habit of picking up the pen. Don't press pen to paper and create anything, at all, not even a drawing, not even a doodle, not even a dot, but most especially: Don't write. Don't invest in pens and pencils like drug paraphanalia you keep on-hand just in case you need another hit, another fix, another emotional selfie of how you feel in this very instant and how it relates to everybody else. Don't scramble for a piece of paper to write on like you dropped a rock in the floorboard and need to stuff it back in your pipe, light it, and feel better.

Don't use it as a crutch. Don't use it as an escape. Don't use it as a support group. Don't use it to pass the time. Don't use it to purge. Don't use it as a method to figure out how you work, inside. Don't use it as a tool to try to understand the world. Don't use it to get out of your own skin. God, you hate yourself, don't you? Don't leave yourself behind to be part of other worlds. Don't do it a little at a time, and a little at a time, like stepping up to the edge of a cliff and teetering there for years until you finally fall into the abyss and the nothingness, and the never-endingness of it all, the untamable sentences, the confounding mixtures of words on words on words, the ever-evolving. Don't use it as a flashlight on a dark path to light the way ahead. Don't use it to remind yourself what you need at the grocery store. Don't use it to remind yourself to be kind. Don't write on sticky notes and post them to your mirror. Don't remind yourself you're okay. Don't write love notes to other people. Don't write love notes to yourself. Don't send it in a letter; don't write eulogies or epitaphs, don't use it as a glue to hold yourself together.

I'm begging you: Please don't write.

Don't write. If you have the choice, don't write. Don't do it, if it hasn't been forced on you. Don't do it if you weren't, you know, held down and forced to write. Don't write unless you can't breathe without writing. Don't write unless you need to; even then, try not to write.

Don't seek solace in words. Don't try to find meaning in them. Don't let it become a compulsion. Don't let it become your life.

Don't tell your friends you write. Don't tell your relatives. They'll just think it's weird, and if they don't think it's weird, they'll think they're a critic. They'll want to give you helpful advice, as an audience, but not helpful advice as a craftsman. They'll tell you it's easy to write. They'll say they could write a book, if only they had the time, like writing isn't its own work, like it's not a labor of passion, like it's not painful, and like their time is being spent so much better than your time spent writing. They'll ask if you've been published. They'll ask if you were published in anything they've heard of. They'll say you're no J. K. Rowling. Don't write.

Don't eat, sleep, and breathe writing.

Don't write; don't get good at it, for sure, then they might WANT you to write. And, then, by God, you might slip and fall into being a writer. Don't be a writer; don't write. To be a writer you have to be an open book and then you have to be an anatomy teacher, talking about all those things that people do; you have to spend hours reasearching and studying and observing and then you have to tell other people about it all. You may as well go be a rocket scientist or a doctor or a lawyer or a business executive. You'll get paid better and you'll definitely have food in your stomach. To be a writer, you have to dissect the actions of the people around you, you have to understand and explain and shock and awe, and you have to be entertaining, when you do it, like a clown with a scalpel. To be a good writer you have to be a self-dissecting-nearly-cadaver, keeping yourself alive, by some miracle, you Frankenstein, you freak of nature, you freak of nurture. You! Barely hanging on, and teaching the world about the delicate rhythms of your insides and showing them how it feels to be mutilated and to let yourself be gut over and over, again, and showing the world that you've somehow continued, somehow survived. Don't give them hope, you liar! Don't write! Don't you dare!

Besides, there's nothing worse than somebody wanting things from you and calling your skillset a gift and saying you should share it with the world for free, as if it's not a craft. They see writing everywhere, every day, why would they think it would be anything but natural to anybody? They see it on signs and in magazines, on newspaper stands, so, if you can write, then you should just write and you should just write everything for free, because they see writing all the time, in passing, for free, and it's just always around, right? They will take advantage of you: Don't write.

I was thinking

about not drinking

anymore.

And then I was thinking,

Hemingway wrote his best works

while intoxicated.

So did Stephen King.

And Walt Whitman.

Well he was drinking alot too.

So, for now I will have a drink.

And think about this more, later.

Lost.

No coordinates.

Nothing.

She vanished into a Donnie Darko reality with wild

pikas and downtown streets and injured people.

But I do know the last things she did.

She drove home from the mountains,

with plants in her veins and tears in her

eyes. She tried listening to songs but it

didn't help. Walking was harder, she had

become the injured people. Beaten by time

once again. You will baby sit the dog, they

said. You will baby sit the dog and stay here,

just like the dog, and you will not drive us out

of our minds again, you will not drive, period.

She disapered slowly, going away piece by piece,

frame by frame.

But I do know the last things she saw.

She watched as the light turned from red to

green, she watched people without homes wait

for breakfast, she watched a fan turn around and

around in a room. She saw a game on tv that many

were watching, she saw a chest with the treasure of a

heart, she saw herself leave the room and never come

back.

She left herself at home, wherever that was, running

away from safety as fast as she possibly could.

Melted like ice in a cup of water. Memories leaned back

in their seats and sighed, fire works went off in the brain,

music, so much music to put faces into, do I want you to

be happy? good. looks like it should be cold outside. do you

believe in time travel? Donnie, wake up Donnie. Huh. That

was savage. Best conversation I've ever had with her, my mom.

She chose to disconnect from herself entirely. Log off of her existence

and start a new account. Hmm, what to call this one. Jaguar roaming

wild, stay on the right side of the road? No. The light is green, why are

you coming to a stop? Perhaps. And it's yes in here, not yeah, come on.

Her soul has been forgotten in the corner, nobody came to save it from

burning out. Nobody saw it. Nobody could.

Push the envelope, I dare you.

One more time and you'll lose yourself.

The delete button pulled her in close, holding her being just tight enough,

just strong enough, and she vanished.

Lost.

No coordinates.

Nothing.

Jamie Ashworth cannot be found.

There I stood, looking in the mirror. Not recognizing the person I had become. How long had I been gone? My life sprawled around me, a closet full of clothes, the glint of a gold chain around my neck. A gift. Down the hall I could hear my husband talking, my children playing, familiar and yet...not. The stranger in the mirror stared back at me. A little older than I remembered, she was me and she lived here now.

His hands traced over every mark on her skin....

She asked why he would always do that,

He stopped then whispered in her ear...

‘I love all of you honey~’

‘Your marks are a Constellation..’

#CONSTELLATION

When the lights go black and then the pillow talk

The nighttime laughter in the den of dark

I vanish to enter the sadness hinders me

Misery concealed within the sheets

So my phone lights up just as the tears roll down

The sulking stops because I missed that sound

And everything seems so new to me now

So I read her name then I say it out loud

And it’s as if I’ve heard it for the first time

Just a few syllables to burn my cursed mind

So I write one line in my hard cover journal

It was something poetic, I forgot the words though