i will live

today was my last day in my creative writing class and my teacher gave everybody a piece of paper to write down a contract and to put it in our wallets. she said she did the same thing when she was younger and every now and then she’d brush by it and remember that she wanted to write. everybody took time to write out what they wanted and I just sat at the back of the class, sitting on the windowsill and I knew there was only one thing to write but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. at the end of the class after everybody left, I went to thank her for the year, and she told me that people should be reading my words for a long time, but they won’t be able to do that if I’m not around to write them. I showed her the blank piece of paper, and she said it was okay not to write anything, and then I wrote this. I learned the power of words in that class, I learned it was okay to vomit up half a dozen notebooks stained with blood and exploded pens because it means you have something to say.