V. H. King's Ink

When I went to the Butter Fine Art Fair last year, I left with a renewed commitment to put out Late in the Midnight Hour. I had been working on it all summer, but Butter was the push I needed to set a release date and plan accordingly. I made my little announcement on October 19th. When the world fell apart all over again in November, I knew it was for this that I had spent hours revising and retyping and reformatting and refining exactly what I wanted between those pages.

I knew I wasn’t alone in how I felt then, and I certainly wasn’t alone now, and even though I wasn’t in a 9 to 5 office job—or any job at all, for that matter—that isolation and uncertainty and silent rage of struggling to keep from being strangled by this invisible waking nightmare of a reality is real for so many people. Too many.

I’ll admit, I didn’t really have much planned in the way of next steps after LitMiH. I wasn’t sure if I could do anything else. My physical and cognitive capacity are fickle as ever, so there are never any guarantees. I poured myself into LitMiH and I told myself that if it was the last thing I did, then so be it.  Telling myself that helps me let go of a lot of my anxious questioning.

What if the next volume isn’t as good?

What if no one buys it?

What if this blurs into obscurity?

What if no one likes it?

Well…actually…who cares?

I did the work to get my words out there.

As for the rest? Shrug.

I didn’t think about giving myself time to rest after publishing LitMiH. I have this fear that if I stop, I’ll never be able to start again. I wasn’t writing, but all my energies were directed elsewhere. Moving out of my parents’ (again), tabling at an author fair even when all my plans fell through, finishing paintings in time for gallery submissions. My summers seem to have become a tradition of traveling and painting. Exhilarating and exhausting in the best ways. In the back of my head, though, I was still anxious about what I would write next.

This year, I came to Butter with the brave goal of…being brave. I wasn’t thinking of myself as an artist. I don’t think I’m anywhere near the caliber of quality and artistry of the works I’ve seen at Butter—but I have been reflecting on my role as a poet, and why that work matters, and I came to Butter to show up in solidarity. I listened to Q&As and conversations and talks and I resolved to speak up—as best I could.

Last year I didn’t talk to any artists or panelists. I didn’t think I had anything coherent to say. I wasn’t even sure if I could still be an artist or an author. This year, I made it a point to at least say thank you when someone’s words and work impacted me. I could take that step, right? Of course I could. In the last year, I had published a book, tabled at an author fair, submitted to galleries. All those things gave me the confidence and courage to…send a message to a few artists after their talks and say thank you.

I knew if—when—I talked to them, I’d get the inevitable question:

Are you an artist?

Not really.

Not professionally.

Not like you are.

Folks could probably see all that written on my face as I hesitated. The first person who asked me that question was an author, though, which probably helped me answer honestly. I wasn’t talking to an artist, so I could admit—

“My mom would tell me to say yes, so…yes?”

“Yes, of course yes! Own that!”

(Note: I did not talk about my writing in this interaction.

See how that worked?)

Sending DMs on Instagram made for accessible introductions. I took the small step of saying something. I took the slightly bigger step of identifying myself: I signed off with my name and a parenthetical—

(the one with the purple hair in the bright teal/turquoise wheelchair).

Turns out, just being my disabled self simplified the same thing I had agonized over the year before. Something about that gave me a bit more courage, and by the end of the end of the day, I had managed to say thank you with mouth-words.

Phresh Laundry replied to my message and said he’d find me and say hi on Saturday, if I planned on being there. His willingness to do that gave me the courage to be even more brave, so I came up with a plan. On Saturday, I had my author + artist post cards, I had the booklet with all the artists from Butter Five, and I had the courage to be seen. I asked artists for their signatures and thanked them for their work—and when they asked me if I was an artist, I said yes.

I was surprised by how easy it was to answer questions about my projects and which mediums I worked in. I mean, it was still terrifying. I was shaking on the inside and hyper-aware of every single sound and motion and sensation at once. But I didn’t feel like I was lying.

I knew my work, as a poet. I knew my words reached people. I had come to Butter in solidarity and support, and I held fast to something I had only half-believed before.

I’m one part of a great many who are saying the same thing, and maybe something a little different, each in their own way. And all of it needs to be heard.

So here’s to courage.

Here’s to collaborating.

Here’s to trying, because you have to try even though trying is exhausting and sometimes—most of the time, even—it’s going to feel like nothing ever changes. Hope is going to feel as thin as an optical illusion and all you’ll be able to hold onto will be all those things you’ve told yourself again and again that you don’t know how to believe anymore when faced with everything in front of you.

The old things will hurt in new ways but the world will heal.

Because it has to.