Sincere Apology of a Writer

Credit: Droakir

Dear family, friends, and the one I passed on the street today,

I am sorry.

I hope you will perceive my apology is sincere, despite the fact that your life now appears on the page, flowing from the pen held in place by the familiar grooves in the fingers of my right hand.

I write myself too, of course.  But of course I do; I am my own (aren't I?).  But are you?  What right do I have to tug at your life, begging it to submit, to lie down on the page before me, to lie still between the thin blue lines, not to flinch though I stretch it here and trim it there?

I am amazed that all of you do not fly at me in rage, shouting, "Give me back my days!  My hours, my minutes, my moments."  If you had known what would become of the smile you gave in exchange for mine last week, would you have bestowed it so freely?  I question myself this way, too.  I am enraged at what appears on the page when it does not come at my bidding, but of its own free will.

And so I hope that you will understand the sincerity of my apology, and see that though it is my hand holding my pen marking my page, it is not I who writes, completely.  Or, what is written by my hand is also written by yours here on this page.  And that I cannot even write this apology without asking your forgiveness.

Yours (if you like, just as you are mine),
a Writer