EVERYTHING I WILL NOT WRITE

My writing constrains itself. It limits itself to what I know and cages itself within my experience. When it attempts to sneak through the chicken-coop fence of my being to rob the stories of others, I seize it and ground it to what is responsible and fair, religiously protecting the dignity of my characters. I will not write about the abandoned refugee boy wearing his sister’s white hand-me-down gown, its lace sleeves torn and stained, nor his dirt-covered scalp, nor the rusty nail between his teeth. I will not write about the Kakuma Camp rehabilitation ward, where an infant lay entangled in tubes, restless, wide-eyed, and crazed with hunger, too weak to weep. I will not write about the Holocaust, lest I make comparisons I know are not to be made because they parch my throat and make my hair stand on end. I will not mention what I felt last month when I visited Yad Vashem, and froze before the black-and-white photograph of the two bony barefoot beggar children wrapped in oversized tattered woolen overcoats, listlessly wandering the streets of the Warsaw Ghetto, finding hope only in each other’s warmth. I will only mention the lone thought that echoed in my throbbing head: that I would be a fool to bring children into this world. But while my procreation may be within my control, my writing writes itself.