Brialee Turner

In the center
the character really
starts to fall in love with me,
because I stayed through the messy
and complex exposition
to understand her.
She didn’t ask me to,
but I know that if she was
the one discovering *my*
story for the birth of it,
I would want her to stick around
through my emotional
and spiritual puberty.

You lost the chance to
deeply read me when you
tried to use your own language
to understand my words.
This anger is so hot
I feel inclined to burn
the pages where you wrote
down what you think should
have happened instead.
And then a deep chasm
where I want to violently
rip out the pages
where you completely
disregarded my voice.
You can not come into the plot
of my life expecting
to rewrite my experiences
and the song of my heart in order
to cover up your
own grammatical errors
and gaps of prose.
You weren’t there when I needed
your help,
so don’t try to add ink
to the published copy.
(It’s rude to annotate books you
haven’t bought yet, you know?)

My perspective and choice of
action is not for sale.

I told you how I felt
and you didn’t listen.

So when a character isn’t
fully in color to me,
I read ahead to see where
my black and white is me
reading in a room without a lamp.

You might want to consider
ordering a flashlight to help you
when your eyes can’t see the truth
or a pencil and with an eraser
so that you can preserve
the voice of the author
amidst your helpless efforts to
keep the narrative in a box.