Bridges

Sixteen years ago I started a blog to write about my life, to tell my story, to remember and to find the beauty and joy in my world. It became the way I found people who connected with things I wrote. It was the way I found my voice.

I had some unwritten rules that I followed.

Tell your story.

Love the details.

Find meaning.

I think everyone can and should write. Words are powerful. Words can make us feel deeply thankful or like we are missing out. Words can liberate or dismiss us.

And writing is also like small drops collecting to form something larger. Words can describe a simple thing like an older man and woman sitting on a bench on the side of the road, smiling at me as I walk by. And that picture, written down so I remember, can ease a sense of loneliness.

Even the word ‘hello’ is a bridge.

I am deeply thankful for poetry. I have often felt wordless in prose over this last year of things I have not known how to process, but I have been able to write poems. I have been able to sketch strange drawings and diagrams that help me orient myself. This year of poetry has reminded me of what it means to write small things often, to let things build up.

I hope I can find a way to write about my days in small ways again, in prose. This quiet, the fog I find myself in has been very deep. Maybe poems are my only language now. I guess we’ll see. But small things do add up.

Here are some small things. I am sitting at a table with many university students who are doing homework. The boy across from me is doing complex math. The boy beside me is distracted by reels on his phone. (As I write this, he puts his phone away and gets back to work.) The girl nearby has the neatest notes I have ever seen.

I went to the market yesterday and saw light falling on people, touching their faces and hair, illuminating their hands as they worked. One girl, on her way home from school, stood on the footbridge and gazed along the street for a long time. I don’t know what she was thinking, but the moment felt familiar to me. I wonder if her eyes landed on any one thing, or if she just let them rest on the sky.