Moonlight & Metaphors

I hope you have sea legs , my father said to me as we got on a fishing boat in a small town  in Newfoundland. Sea legs, I thought,  how peculiar that person can measure  their ability to stand  while the ocean waves crash against the sides keeping us afloat In Italy, as the dock swayed  while l loaded my luggage onto the water-taxi  with a bald Venetian man Sea legs, I thought  that's why I can stand.  My mother smiled over, as I stood up and breathed in the Adriatic  In Toronto, the subway jerks to a stop Sea legs,  I thought, that's why I can stand.

            The other night, a poet asked me if I was a writer, and I stood there and froze at his simple but complicated question. The word hit me with the force of a mass of bricks. I suddenly stopped and thought, am I a writer? The word felt too good for me, like it was insulting of me to call myself that considering all to the great living and lived writers, authors, poets. Am I a writer? Well, to me no, I didn't think I could call myself that, it felt too good for me.             I once read this book, "My Salinger Year" by Joanna Rakoff to be exact, and one of my favourite quotes from it explained that being able to call yourself a writer takes one thing —   you must write. It's been a while since I picked up that pen, and I'm sitting here with the question lingering in my head, can I still call myself that? I want to, but life just gets so busy and it takes all the time it can get. So, I guess what I'm trying to say is that I want to feel like