V. H. King's Ink

In both title and content, Late in the Midnight Hour seems ominous on first glance. For better and for worse, the past repeats itself. Too much violence from the past year echoes the events of 2020, and it was this resurgence that pushed me to finally finish revising these poems and publish them with my art. LitMiH is the first volume in a series of collections I’m not sure I’ll be able to complete, given my health. So why do it?

Because this is all I have.

That’s the short answer, anyway.

Between Summer 2023 and Summer 2024, I struggled to figure out what I would do with my writing. Transitioning into something like a full-time writer/ artist was my ideal outcome, post brain surgery.  I hadn’t expected everything to go smoothly, but I had no way of knowing that my language processing would float off into the ether. I’ve had to spend so much of my recovery re-learning how to read and write. In my frustration, I decided maybe I should just forget about publishing anything.

The brain is a muscle, sure, but mine feels torn beyond (full) repair. Even now, I worry that the effort to publish LitMiH is whittling down my capacity rather than building up any kind of cognitive endurance. If you wanted to be purely reductionist, you could say that LitMiH and the other volumes of This Too is Prayer only require me to copy and paste a bunch of stuff into a manuscript, add some pictures, and call it good. 

If I’ve already written all of these poems, what’s so hard about getting them in between two covers?

I’ve asked myself that a hundred-dozen times over.

As you might guess, publishing is a bit more complicated than that. My physical stamina for sitting upright is still wobbly, and one rainy day can take me out for two weeks. Winter is around the corner, and the cold is not exactly kind to my body. I still struggle to read and write, believe it or not.  Sometimes, the words are just gone and there’s nothing I can do to force them back any faster. There are days when my brain just can’t make sense of any combination of words, whether they’re on a screen or on a page.

I have several more volumes planned for This Too is Prayer, as well as another poetry series from my college days. I can’t tell you when they’ll be released, because I don’t know yet.  In some ways, it is just copy and paste. But it’s also picking fonts and scanning art (and making more art when I need to).

It’s adding page numbers and playing around with line-breaks—and it’s also honoring lives lost. It’s grieving for my younger self. It’s healing my default position of defensiveness. It’s hearing the love others have for me and letting myself receive care.

Part of my everyday reality is a dynamic disability; it likes to shapeshift symptoms and severity, which makes it difficult to predict or explain. In whatever capacity I’m able to write and make art, I have to honor my limits. Measuring myself by how often I post on social media or update my website will only result in disappointment. I have no interest in hustling my way through algorithms and chasing trends. I’m more focused on giving myself space to rest, to heal, to dream—because there’s so much to work towards and to hope for.

As frightful as my world feels, I’m choosing to be gentle with myself. From elected officials to insurance companies, most institutions have little compassion for someone like me. I think that’s all the more reason to show compassion to myself, and to my friends, and to offer the world whatever kindness I have. More than that, I think I owe it to myself to find my joy, to lift my voice, to hold my head with pride.

Life can pull its punches. I will still live with purpose.