A Writer’s Wish

A writer’s wish often would be to write something that would astound the world. We want to leave them awe-struck, speechless, hanging on to our every sentence, breathless.

We want to change them, we want to shape them, we want to build a legacy out of words.

Is that selfish?

We write about things that seize you by the neck of your shirt, pulling you closer and closer like a bully in a dark alleyway. We write about things that make you feel vulnerable,

stripping you naked of your defences- the walls you put up to protect yourself. We write

about things that keep you gasping, running on ragged breaths like when you take a shower under icy water at 5 a.m.

Is that selfish?

We write about death- although most of us have never known death; never felt the gravity

of it closing in on us, bearing down on our eyelids. We write about war as if we think it is

poetic- but is it? How would we know? How can we justify being poetic about a death we

have never known? How can we justify feeling feelings we have never felt, but write up as if we had?

We taint you with our imaginations; stain you with a world that we have woven out of

words. We paint ourselves up to be the Moses of literature- leading you out of your

comfort zone, into a sweltering desert of the unknown, promising a Promise Land which

even we have not yet seen with our own eyes but we believe to be true.

And yet you drop into our brittle arms, squeezing your eyes tightly, heart beating rapidly,

erratically; hoping that we will catch you. Hoping to find your home in the severing

foundation of our scripted thoughts.

Is that selfish?

Is asking for some form of trust selfish? Is pushing you beyond your boundaries, pushing you ahead of the safety line selfish?

Is the core of life to feel? To imagine? Or to be rooted in what you already know- in what is already deemed safe?

Is asking for some form of belief, some form of recognition, selfish? We do not have the

right to try to manipulate what you feel but we’ve done it. Aren’t your feelings yours? Who are we to try to make you feel things you don’t have to feel.

We stir you- hoping that through it you will remember a part of us. Be it a name, a sentence, or half a quote; we want you to know who we are. And we’ve attacked you through your senses, through your heart and spirit, piercing deep till we’ve left some sort of scar that will suffice as memory.

Is that selfish?