Even as I stretch my mouth into some semblance of a decent smile, my spineless lips curl in on themselves, retreating towards my throat the way the ocean recoils from the shore and slithers back to the horizon.
I always carefully greet my family and friends with the most pathetic excuse for a grin—the greatest travesty of spontaneous delight—all because I fear that they might see my pitch-black gums and charcoal-stained teeth. Afraid that they would realize that I’d ingested more ink than “actual” food.
But my struggle to sustain a casual façade does not merely end there. No.
I am also forced to shove my hands into my pockets so that passers-by would not catch a glimpse of the magic glittering at my fingertips or the pencil shavings frantically tucked beneath my painted nails. I have no choice but to ignore the weight of a thousand worlds and a million words dangling from my wrists like literary bracelets.
I am the Moon – A Creative Nonfiction by Chigozie Anyanwu – Nigeria
Because if anyone were to discover how deeply dictionaries have buried themselves inside of me—and I inside of them—then they would inevitably try to tear the pages from my grasp, claiming that it’s for my own good when their interests clearly revolve around their own selfish concerns. If they knew that lavish libraries, with their dusty shelves and books, have built their palatial homes inside of my lungs, then they would split open my chest and strip me of my stories.
This is why I dip my head towards the ground, pressing the tip of my nose against stone and sand, so that nobody would notice my bloodshot gaze and the dark crescents beneath my eyes—the side effects of late-night perusals.
The symptoms of an addiction.
But it was not the kind of drug I first became acquainted with and then decided to take it in small, experimental dosages; I was not magnetized to in stages.
No.
I fell for it all at once, as it had been threaded through my existence since birth. Although, when I was much younger, I had been oblivious to my obsession. But like the seductive sirens that they are, innumerable stanzas of poetry had shamelessly seated themselves upon distant rocks that jutted out of the sea and sang my name so sweetly across the dark ocean. As I was being lured into the mist, volumes upon volumes of rhyme schemes and extended metaphors had swept my entire body beneath their suffocating waves… yet I had not tried to escape their infinite embrace.
I allowed fiction to engulf me.
Ever since then, my passion for reading and writing has become a blazing blind fire that burns through my veins, its eyes long-since gouged out by that irrepressible desire for more and more and more—and my faithful blood is the gasoline that feeds its roaring flame.
Zombies Amongst Us – A Creative Nonfiction by Herman Owuor – Kenya
It is an insatiable craving that cleverly carves itself into my bones. Its knotted roots twist inside of me like gnarled claws, sinking into my thirsty soul, seeking fertile soil and permanent anchorage. And like the desperate fool I am, I soak its thick wooden fingers in water instead of letting them shrivel up into splinters. Like an incompetent (yet committed) gardener, I have irrigated the wild plants that have invaded my heart until I could no longer find it in me to smash my knuckles against my sternum and rip out the weeds that I’ve weaved throughout my ribcage like flat green pythons.
It is the thief that steals my mind—and due to its burglary, my thoughts are not my own.
It is a killer and I am its devoted victim.
It is a parasite and I am its loyal host.
It is a poison and I devour it daily.
And as I consume it, it consumes me.
So, I kill myself slowly, steadily, sadistically—savouring every single second of my suffering. For I would rather peel back my skin piece by piece than rip it off in one sitting.
I would rather fall into my grave before my pen falls away from my grip.
—
Carmi Philander I’m simply an 18-year-old writer who strives to have her name propped up beside those of other popular authors. So far, two of my submissions have already been included in the WSA magazine’s previous anthologies. She has completed three poetry collections and is currently writing a sci-fi novel, she has also previously published a children’s book of twenty-five short stories when she was fourteen.
