The Archer

Around my neck, there is an archer:
a Neolithic Celtic pictogram mass-produced, pressed into train-tracked five pence
and sold for £3 each in the Stonehenge gift shop-
it may not look like much, but then,
I don’t look like much, so this works for me

sure, it’s a cheap little thing, and it shouldn’t matter so much,
a silver-smudged sliver on a thin black cord, distressed, ever-fraying,
held in place with a thin black knot pulled tight by hopeful fingers, lifted, kissed
before first dates and second chances, before second thoughts, before that first breath
into the pulsing, screaming space between my voice and the microphone, lifted, kissed
by hopeful lips and it shouldn’t matter so much

but I’m a writer, and we do this kind of thing a lot, actually:
we take all of the faith we don't have in ourselves and turn it in for
tricks and hints of superstition, we run on nervous energy drawn from so many little things
that no one else would touch, find worth where no one else looks,
where any sane, happy person would be too content to even think
of ever trying to find something there,
because no one else ever seems to need it that bad- not like we do

So I’ve got this archer,
I have this lift, kiss, breathe, remember,
remember to breathe,
remember that I could’ve been safe in bed watching Netflix right now, then
remember how much I hate safe,
remember how much better the terror feels, because all of this matters
because there are people in the crowd waiting, hoping they’ll see something amazing,
so now I have to matter

remember that the archer is a symbol of aggression-
not like a punch in the face, just a shot in the dark,
like “there’s your target, now go hit it”,
like “all of your friends are on that dance floor, now go hit it”,
like “there’s your cue and there’s your teleprompter, now go the other way entirely”,
remember this is your story, so write your own fucking dialogue

because I’m a writer, and we write all of our own dialogue:
we spin our words into our worlds, ink them into our skin, wear them around our necks,
hearts in both hands like a Claddagh choker, something to fiddle with while filling
every line in our notebooks, we’ll cover every flat surface in our apartments with notebooks
until we run out of pages, and all we can do is
scream ourselves out into the skies for anyone who’ll listen

because we’re writers,
and we have to believe that if we’re brave enough,
if we’re clever enough to open our stupid mouths,
somebody out there will listen