Write it

I had found my way to the City Lights basement. It was gloomy, and I was surrounded by books. They crowded the walls; they pressed upon me. And I stood before them, numb.

Then I heard it—a small whisper, a growing whisper, louder, louder, louder still. Another joined it, and another. A swelling tide of whispers rose up and roiled around me, words rubbing against words, pages chanting stickily to one another, ideas floating on the air, sliding down the walls, piling up in drifts on the concrete floor.

I felt a welling in my ribcage at the same time. Something was rising up in me, as if called, seduced, given breath by all those words, all those ideas that slipped and slithered around the room. Up it came, up, up, until it reached my chest—the place just below my collar bone.

There it lodged, flattening and spreading and nestling into the thin space above my lungs. Between head and heart. Right beneath my larynx, my voicebox.

This idea wanted control. It wanted to be told. It would not capitulate.

There was only one way out: write it.