this piece is part of my exclusive creative writing series for paid subscribers. a space for the ones who don’t just want to write, but want to conjure, carve, and call into existence the stories, selves, and futures they are done waiting for.
because writing
is not just about putting words on a page.
it’s about putting yourself on the line.
it’s about realizing language
is not just description, but design.
not just reflection, but revolution.
not just ink, but incantation.
it’s about knowing
that every sentence is a spell,
every metaphor a map,
every story a seed of something you are planting in the future.
and if you’re willing to bleed a little, if you’re willing to unravel, if you’re willing to write the kind of words that shape not just the page, but the person writing them—
then you can read more about this series here.
now, let’s begin.
there was a boy who thought he could outrun himself.
a boy who changed his clothes, his lovers, his zip code,
believing that if he moved fast enough,
his shadow wouldn’t catch him.
but shadows do not live in the past.
they live in the words we tell ourselves
about who we are.
so the boy ran.
and every time he thought he had arrived,
the same ghosts were waiting for him in the mirror.
but there was a man who stopped running.
a man who stood in the wreckage of his old life,
picked up the shards, and started building.
a man who realized that the words he spoke,
the stories he wrote, the truths he whispered
into the dark—
these were not just reflections.
they were blueprints.
they were spells.
they were the magic
that turns ghosts into gods,
boys into men, pain into poetry.
this is how we become.
not by accident.
not by fate alone.
but by the words we refuse to swallow,
by the sentences we repeat
until they become scripture,
by the stories we write about ourselves
until one day, they are no longer fiction.
and if you don’t believe me, look at my hands.
they are covered in ink.
in incantations.
in promises i have written to myself
like prayers i dare not forget.
look at my past.
my divorce.
my drug abuse.
my homelessness.
the night i sat alone in a house
that didn’t feel like mine anymore,
writing words like weapons
until they became wings.
what does it mean to be a man? i asked.
what does it mean to be the kind of man
who holds love like a cathedral
instead of a cage?
and then i wrote the answer.
not because i was already him,
but because i knew i could be.
i called it men vs boys, and it wasn’t just a poem.
it was a declaration.
it was a contract with my future self.
it was a line drawn in the sand,
a door slammed shut,
a spell cast so clearly that the universe had no choice
but to rearrange itself accordingly.
because that is the power of language.
it does not describe reality.
it builds it.
and if you are waiting
for the life you want to find you,
if you are waiting for the future version of yourself
to arrive unannounced, let me tell you the truth—
you have to write them into existence.
step one: decide who you are becoming
writing is the closest thing we have to time travel.