This is my question today.
And usually every Wednesday.
Or Tuesday.
Depends.
Why does my story matter?
Okay, so I can weave words in a way sometimes
that makes you almost cry
that makes you remember the time you had blintzes in that cafe on 2nd Avenue
that makes you look frantically in the closet for the sundress you know you didn’t sell at Buffalo Exchange — you know it, you just know it, but where IS it — for a pair of people earrings that looked like the ones you got at Accessory Place with babysitting money
that makes you comb the recesses of your mind for the smell of your grandmother’s perfume
that makes you wish you didn’t throw away your walkman
or your diary from 5th grade the one with the pink plastic cover that you got for free with a magazine subscription that said
“I got my period today.”
Sometimes I do that to you.
I make you remember.
Is that enough to make my story matter?
Sometimes I write what comes to me and what comes to you is like what comes to me
and it makes you miss someone
or kiss someone
or call someone
or, better yet, write them a letter
or draw them a picture or make them a mixed tape.
Or send them back the mixed tape they made for you once.
Or twelve of them.
Does that make my story matter?
Sometimes
on Wednesdays
or Tuesdays
Depends —
I wonder why I write.
I wonder my story matters.
I wonder why it can’t just live inside me
just inside me
just there
for me.
What must I tell you?
Why must I make sense of it?
Why must I
make it beautiful
or agonizing
or wonderous?
Why must I?
