An elementary-school student, I sat solitary in my family’s suburban home in the South on a sofa and scribbled poetry in my diary. I began stories in medias res, in the middle of action.
Books were my first companions. Libraries offered me solace. Tantalizing knowledge, like the height of an apple tree, often evaded the youthful me until adulthood brought me understanding. Growing up, I had few physical friends. Oceans of empty carpet like a moat separated me from the public. At home, I read alone by the light of the compassionate moon and the sorrowful sun. Both hurt and healed us.
My candle could only light up from within. Some people radiate warmth. I burn many colors in dark worlds—old and new. Sometimes, red, yellow, white, or blue. Fictional ghosts surrounded me in my imagination. Capricious little wisps of air, like smoke disappeared.
I poured into each page like filling a vase. Yet, my neck wilted. I was the lonely flower in this equation. So, I asked the unseen God, “Why do stories carry so much weight?”
Stories are the heaviest boulder we carry as we climb uphill. Stories bring sorrow when people rush to conclusions. No one sits at the apex secure.
“Why start a story from the beginning? Because that’s how the Bible begins in Genesis…?”
A writer takes us as close to the ending as possible. Then, finishes by giving us fresh vision with new possibilities, pulling weeds and planting seeds that grow into tall trees that last for generations, providing oxygen, helping us breathe. Details, like leaves, seek sunlight and dance with the breeze. We want an audience who listens, who shakes and trembles with fear when we fall on our knees praying for justice for the protagonist—someone reverent wishing the best for us, the hero so rarely in my image, so rarely my dark complexion.
So, why are the best stories told at night? For that is when we aim for transcendence. The night crashes on our shore. We awake to a world we did not know before. When the dawn manifests—an awakening—we are gripped by contentment. We have lasted another cycle of day and night, dark and light.
So, I write…
Until my words reach the next person through the veil of a book. We travel together. We persist. That little girl in me resides in a story. I am someone new. No longer alone. I shared my story with you.
Yerusalem Work
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