My gift arrived with a pencil- two pencils, bound together by their tips, which formed a graphite chain between them. I didn't know what it meant, then.
Now I do.
My gift was a quiet one. There were no shouts of joy or surprise when I found it. Just the sound of pencil sliding over paper, like a small gasp.
For many days I did not think of the chained pencils that had appeared on my doorstep the same day as my gift. When I did, it was only to wish I had saved them. I had run out of pencils again, and all my pens and markers had run dry. I had no time to think and remember if I had thrown them out or put them somewhere. My fingers itched and flinched with the desire to move. I found a tube of lipstick and used that instead to continue the story that had wrapped itself around the walls of my room.
Like a child stepping willingly into a pit of quicksand I not only built my own cell but locked myself into it. Even when my eyes hurt from squinting in the dark and my fingers were raw from scratching words into the walls, I did not realize.
Now I know.
Words are dangerous, sentences and paragraphs and stories are weapons of mass destruction. In my tiny cell, all alone, my fingers tremble with the knowledge of what simple letters can mean. And still I write. I am writing for escape, for myself. I wrote this prison, I locked it with words; surely with my stories I can escape. Words cannot be meant to lock people only away. If I can keep writing- if my fingers can keep still long enough- if there is still room on the gritty floor- if I can keep my eyes open long enough- I can write myself an ending that does not end here-
