High

Last week, I wrote a post about the movie “Joker.” I wrote about feeling the same way that Arthur Fleck, a.k.a. Joker, felt—maligned, overlooked, and misunderstood. When I was writing it, I kept thinking of this quote by Anais Nin that I’ve always related to: “Had I not created my whole world, I would certainly have died in other people’s.” I’ve survived mental illness, trauma, and substance abuse because of the grace of God. I’ve also survived and continued to cope by creating a world for myself, as Anais Nin said. I didn’t fit into anyone else’s world, so I made my own. And one of the most integral parts of that world is writing.

I’ve been in love with language my whole life. And that love has saved my life more than once. It’s given me passion, purpose, and an outlet for the pain and joy I feel so deeply. I am most truly myself when I’m writing.

After writing about “Joker,” I wrote this poem. It’s my story of existing in the world I built for myself.

High
– Renee Adele Phillips

Denver:
Four years old in the back
of my parents’ station wagon:
they don’t know I can read yet
but I can
and every lit-up sign is a welcome sign—
a gateway to new words.
I whisper them to myself,
tasting each syllable:
Zimmerman Aluminum
Grizzly Rose
Girls Guys Guns
Signs flash; words change
and I inhale every one.

New York City:
In the city that never sleeps,
I don’t, either.
My family sleeps
while I sit by a hotel window high
above Times Square
my young brain lit
by signs steeped in syllables.
The words are Adderall in neon
and my veins are humming with it.
I want more. I need more.

Home:
In the absence of constant stimuli,
in the silence after Times Square,
I feel an emptiness, an ache for
more
more
more
and I hear a whispered challenge:
Fill it.
Fill the vacuum.
Fill it again and again.
Fill it
and hook someone else
on the endless possibilities
of worlds of words.