Dear Reader,
There are plenty of things you could be doing right at this moment, yet you chose to be here—thank you. Come into this castle I keep building with my words. I'll make you a cup of coffee or tea, whichever you prefer. I'll serve you a glass of red wine if that's what you want. Sit with me on these chairs that reek of lavender. Let your eyes wander on this museum where my decade-old hurts hang in frames of poems. Revel in the glow of my chandeliers of hope. Rest your back on my walls—I don’t fall when leaned on.
I'm here to immortalize my life with the glass shards of my heart. I dare to remind you that we're all going to die and that we aren't dead yet. What does it mean to be alive, anyway? I guess that this place I take up is nothing more than an attempt to articulate what happens between the moment air first fills our lungs to the time a worm scrawls its name into our skin. This is an endeavor to encapsulate pockets of joy and misery, to feel time slip out of our fingers like water and steal it with our cupped palms like swallowtails. I want to capture the glorious and the grotesque, to revel in the mysteries of the elusive, to solve puzzles like one would dismantle a bomb, to write the horror of the darkness and honor the wattages of every spark of light. And all of this with what I've been given – the kinship with words, the courage to defy, and the enormous will to live a thousand lives.
Come inside my glass palace, beloved. Come into my life's museum with the rest of the rooms with curtains still drawn. There are still planes of my soul where I am afraid. Let them be, the rest of my bravery is yours. Come, beloved. Come with the earth on the cracks of your toes. Come crestfallen. Bring out your birthday presents and your funeral food. Come with the locked-up tears in your father's basement. Come with your mottled hands. Take your last lover with you, the one who never kissed you goodbye. Come and meet the girl I was ten years ago. Come and say hello to my future daughter. Give me your grief and humor, your brightest make-up, and your most solemn white carnations. Come all flesh and a heartbeat, as you already are. Come with me.
The heart of a storyteller is a mystical place to be in.
Enjoy your stay.
Enjoy the magic.
It will remain long after you leave.
Love,
Fransivan MacKenzie