Indelicacy

by Amina Cain

Now I have writing, but I also have too much of my own self. I am stalking my own soul.

In books I found even more strongly my desire to write, to write back to them and their jagged, perfect words. I found life that ran close to my own.

We all carry our lives in us, not just our problems or nightmares, but something of what we were before.

At first I thought I knew myself well. Yet, what part of me is false?

It was true, I was mean sometimes. But I didn’t have it in me to be kind to someone who saw me only in relation to property and propriety. To be domestic first and then to be a shallow vessel out and about in the world. Didn’t he understand that was not who I was? I wondered why he had chosen me. And why had I chosen him? Had it been for survival, for experience? Both of those things, I guess.

We cycle in and out of different ways of being, of appearing in the world.

Women, I know they’re attuned to something, they’re always tuned in, I guess.

Who am I if I’m not writing?

Still in the process of becoming, the soul makes room.