Photo by Timon Klauser on Unsplash

I Saw Your Story and I Loved It. Please Write More

I have to admit, I’m a little jealous

Meaningful work. I often wonder if what I do is meaningful. I saw your work today and it’s so beautiful. The way you craft words into lyrical prose and use metaphors that surprise me. I would have never thought of that one, but it’s perfect. How do you link those ideas in your head? Do they just slip onto the page as you write and surprise you too? Beautiful poetic phrases about everyday things, like pasta or fences, that I never thought of as either beautiful or poetic.

And the way you capture how I feel — how did you know? Is it because you feel the same as me? Are we strangers but sisters in this one trial? Or is it that old horoscope trick where there’s a universal experience we don’t think of as universal—

“You’ll meet a stranger and feel uncertain.” “You’ll reflect on the past and it’ll make you sad for what was lost.”

It fools us because we imagine ourselves as special; that our inner-worlds are unique; we’re unicorns in a field of horses. We think no-one has ever felt the exact way we did, or have, or are. Then we stumble across something (like what you wrote) and it’s so raw and out there — prostrate and vulnerable on the page— and we feel it was us that bled those words, and why didn’t we think to write them…