Feels

The transatlantic flight is more hours of alone time than you’ve had in three weeks, the silence rings in your ears, and you try to remember how to breathe on your own, without the structure of a schedule or the lives of others dictating how your lungs move through the day.

All that appears is words.

Stories, ideas, plans, poetry swim around the spaces within you made soft by time and rest and love, tumble out of your fingertips so you cannot keep up, you don’t know why you ever doubted that this was the spirit that sits in you. You vow to ignore the loud voices around you who try to say how a successful life is to be lived. They do not want what you want, so you do not have to aim for what they’re trying to reach.

All I wanted 
was to go to New York City, 
live madly, 
and write.

All I have to do now, 
is listen.