Final Memoir

This is the memoir I'm turning in as part of my final exam in my Creative Writing class. It might be one of my favorite things I've written. Some of the imagery was used in a short little thing I wrote a while ago, and I'm glad I found a home for it in a larger memoir. Enjoy

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If I had thought it through, I probably wouldn’t have taken this class. I already have a history of almost-admirably-honest writing, why would I make that any worse?
It started out innocent and entertaining. I turned in assignments with silly words I made up and charming anecdotes involving nosebleeds and wet pants. My witty banter knew no bounds, and soon my classmates were adding me on Facebook and commenting on my refreshing humor.
“All fodder for the tell-all,” I joked with the boy who always sat across from me in the long, cedar room where our Creative Writing class is. He read my work before I turned it in, always shocked and enthralled.
“This really happened? Really?”
“Fodder, I say!” I laughed with a regal British accent, envisioning the huge success of my shocking insights into the lives of suburban America’s underground drug ring. This was before I started writing what really happened, before I was including all of it; before I started wondering how much you can confess while still holding the charm of one-who-confesses.
Cut to now, end of the semester, sitting on the floor of my apartment. I’m surrounded by writing samples, short stories, memoirs, poems, my first kiss, going insane, never sleeping, being a liar and a felon and thief and glutton and they are pieces of me that I have spent a solid two years trying to put in a shoebox and bury somewhere, with all the dignity of a deceased family pet.
“Why did this class ignite in me such a passion for confession? For sunlight on the face of this dead beast, of this life that I don’t even recognize as mine?” I ask myself as I stare at the writing around me. The pages are crinkled and ripped, typed and handwritten with highlighter scribbles on them all. Which memories can be used?
My legs can’t dance in a blank sleep, I once wrote. Holding the piece of paper now, I can’t make myself reread it. This page has the Absence Of Dreams In Exchange For Sanity, a memory that I don’t want. I give it to you, Page. You can keep it on your white flat face. I don’t want that one anymore. It will remain a story on paper, but is no longer in my mind. The page is grateful for such a well written, heartfelt piece, and I let it float back to the ground.
I pick up an identical sheet, turned in as a short story. I don’t have to read it, the words are so vividly crawling through the grass in my brain. This one is I Didn’t Really Throw A Brick, But I End The Story By Throwing A Brick In An Effort To Justify My Illegal Dealings, a night I could let sink into oblivion and not miss at all.
“Here you go, Page.”
He smiles and swallows the words and gently sighs to the ground. The story will live in the paper, not in me. I watch him settling next to one of his brothers; another keeper of my secrets. But this one catches the light differently; has less of a glitter and more of a gloss. This one is not for blogs or for friends to read; this one was barely turned in. It almost burned my fingers to write it.
“Read me!” she crows into my palm, wildly laughing at my scorched fingers. A she!
“You are not a brother, you are not one of these keepers!” I say incredulously, “You can’t possibly be printed and bring me glory and recognition for the horrors I’ve seen. You are too real. I feel sick when I see you! No one can stomach those memories if I can’t.”
“You wrote me, now see me!” This Page is not kind. This Page should not have been made. This Page holds Finding My Sister Crying In The Kitchen and Being Man Handled By A Drug Dealer. This Page will not take the words from me. She will not descend softly to her friends and be still on top of a pile. She starts folding herself into a delicate, feminine hand. In disbelief, I see her wielding a Pentel Metal Tip pen, and plunging its 0.7 mm ball tip into my bare chest. Liquid gel ink mixes with blood in an assortment of viscera.
She will not take my words and float away, belonging to her and giving me peace. This one is telling itself. She has gained strength from telling of each story, the lines becoming thin, the clarity almost choking. This origami hand is more than paper, it is the ragged burning of having a finger broken by someone you owe money to. It is the fear that makes you hide in a bush for two hours when you think you see a car you recognize as trouble. It’s the two little girls you care for during the day that have a broken family. It’s the surprisingly hot tears your best friend cries into your shoulder when you find her on the floor.
The folded limb begins shaping an introduction to my memoir out of intestines. Oh, cursive. That’s lovely.