What Needs to be Written?

On the way to the subway I walk by the Apple Store
and I ponder what the poet said last night…
“the things you are too afraid to write,
are the things that need to be written.”
But how can they be written when my hand quivers
every time I try to put  my fears to paper.
My thoughts are interrupted
by brown fur in the corner of my eye.
I am walking by a window display of teddy bears at FAO Schwartz.
I am transported to my childhood room
with a couple friends of old.
My teddy bears were soft and cozy against my face.
Their fur tickled my ears
as I used them to muffle the sounds
of my parents’ verbal bouts
as they reached the second story of the house.
They helped me as I forced myself to sleep
to dream that the fighting would
Stop. Stop right here
I’ve divulged too much.
I’ve let you in…
in the subway car people always try to sit one seat apart.
Keeping strangers at arm’s length
and that’s what I do with my poetry.
I protect the paper
I regulate the amount of ink used from my heart’s inkwell
to charge the pen.
Until the flow of people on the train remind me that
My thoughts of her come and go
What I did wrong, what I could have done.
She was my first love
and I screwed up.
I bridled my tongue like I bridle my pen,
I’m afraid that she will be the the first
in a wake of the same mistakes.
Secretly afraid I will be alone
reliving the same regrets.
Like the man holding the doors
I hold back my emotions.
The brakeman’s voice comes in over the intercomm
“You are holding up the train.”
The train to vulnerability, to honesty,
to truth.
To writing what really needs to be written.
But I won’t get there on this train
and it’s going to be a long commute,
I will just have to wait for the next connection of pen to paper.
By Jayson Choe

Why is it so hard to be (emotionally) honest? I don’t know about you, but for myself it’s difficult to be authentic with people. Both in my writing and my personal relationships I find that I emotionally censor myself. I, and probably many people out there, never want to honestly answer the question “how are you?” Or sometimes I never want to tell people what’s really going on. Even people that I am close to.

And I think it’s time for this emotional censorship to stop. I began writing poetry because I was an angst filled teenage that needed an outlet. But how is poetry supposed to be an outlet if I am not willing to be forthright on paper? And that’s where the above poem came from.

I desire to be more sincere since I have moved to New York City. Many people have told me and I learned for myself that in a city of millions, you can still be lonely. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be adrift alone amongst a sea of people. That’s why I want to be more vulnerable in my writing and also with people around me. And maybe, just maybe, you could use the some of the same.

2 Comments

• 
  Mei Ling October 13, 2010 at 6:39 pm

  thank you for sharing this with us

  Reply
• 
  Glennis October 14, 2010 at 10:21 pm

  It is hard to be a writer. It is like the nightmare of finding yourself in a crowded place in your underwear. Its easy to be judged and criticized. But I guess that is the risks to be taken, to write things that really matter. Loved the poem….thanks for holding the train doors for us to enter in.

  Reply