Mike Hickman - Why These Words?

Why These Words?

By Mike Hickman

Why these words, why their hold

still, after so many years

left unattended in their drawer

dusty and unread?

Why do I come back to these?

They don’t describe who I am now

or what has become of me.

Like the silent third panel in a Schulz cartoon

they show the pause

between youthful innocence

and the unexpected punchline of adulthood.

They’re the breath between thought and action

when so much unsaid could have been brought forth

And before certainty and circumstances swept thought and dreams away.

Potential never spoken

And possibility unenacted

They’re a vision of Self

Before Self became concrete.

Their naiveté disgusts as much as fascinates.

Drawing me back to their vision.

Do I seriously think I can begin again from here?

Would I want to, even if I could,

knowing where they finally led?

Why these words in the silence that has fallen?

Why these?

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Mike Hickman (@MikeHic13940507) is a writer from York, England. He has written for Off the Rock Productions (stage and audio), including a 2018 play about Groucho Marx. He has recently been published in the Blake-Jones Review, Bitchin’ Kitsch, the Cabinet of Heed, the Potato Soup Journal, and the Trouvaille Review.

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How writing has affected Mike's wellbeing: Writing has, for the longest time, been bound up with my wellbeing, although the key date in my own personal recovery from the worst is December 27th 2014, when I determined to start writing again, every day, no matter what, and have not - yet - stopped. A former educator (primary education and also teacher training), I lost myself in that job to the point that integral parts of myself drifted away - it seemed forever. No more acting, no more writing, no more thinking about writing. And then the worst happened and I was at the lowest ebb I have ever been and I picked up a novel I'd been toying with, maybe a page or two every half term before all such thoughts were abandoned again by the overwork and the clinical stress. I picked it up again and I just wrote. And I am still here five and a half years later. That is what writing means to me and my personal wellbeing.