i_used_to_be_a_writer kerry we both want to write a book. he wants to gather his experiences and misadventures and add to the union cannon. i didn’t know he wanted to write one, though i’m not surprised. still, it felt like he was telling me a secret. i think it would be a good book. it would look good on a shelf. i just want to put some things together in a way that makes sense, and maybe someone will flip through it without sneering at me for having the audacity to put my words out into the world for strangers to read them. the desire to assemble some pages isn’t new, but this was the first time i’d told anyone i actually want to do it. i venmoed austin $10 for his first book and told him how beautiful the cover is, and he beamed. the cover had been important to him. reading it in bed at night i’m torn between jealousy and awe. i’m already texting him in my mind once i’ve finished. i think this is a sign of rebuilding, like gathering pieces of broken pottery. i was either in a swimming hole in alabama or a lush backyard in atlanta when a mosquito landed on my shin and took a greedy slurp of my blood, trading it for a mysterious poison, and the poison traveled slowly all the way from my shin to my brain, where it folded itself inside out and crackled with static. i’d been a writer and suddenly i couldn’t read or make sense of the shapes on the page, and later i looked at the pages in my diary and the handwriting was like a child’s, like first learning how to spell your own name. when i was learning how to write my name the first time around, i capitalized the E and filled it with horizontal lines so it looked like a comb and the vertical line of the Y extended through the V, making it a witch’s broom. now i like the idea of such an enthusiastic E and primitive Y vibrant and candid i should try to write that way again. there’s nothing “wrong” with filling a sketchbook or wrapping myself in the authenticity of my homeless mother-figures, looking for a hole shaped like me, but after years of wandering and searching, your feet do get awfully tired. 220402 ... raze this punched me right in the heart with flower-covered fists. anyone would be lucky to own a book of your words. reading them here is always one of the best parts of my day. knowing what you had to go through to get to where you are now just makes your voice that much more powerful. thank you for being here, and for being who you are. 220402 ... epitome of incomprehensibility You used to be, and are! Echoing what raze said: that was beautiful. When I was a kid learning letters, I would draw them sometimes as giant flying machines, populated with tiny semi-stick figures. One of them would be at a steering wheel, the others just hanging on. Sometimes I feel like I'm steering the letters, sometimes hanging on. 220403 ... kerry god, thanks y’all. thank you for reading my words. it feels good to be here. 220404 what's it to you? who go blather from