“The Magic of Storytelling”

Often, I feel like my blood is made of fairytales.
I think when I bleed, it runs like ink,
Spells out words, says Once Upon A Time,
There was a boy who, at some point, was a girl,
A knight who was formerly a princess,
A sword that was once a dagger,
A pen that had formerly been a colored pencil,
Writing stories in the margins of math homework.

 

I’ve been a storyteller since before I could speak,
Always riddled with thoughts of what I could and couldn’t be,
Trying to assimilate into the standards I was predestined for.
It took me years and a creative writing class to realize that
storytelling was never about assimilation,
So why should I conform?
Why should I treat daydreamer as an insult, and space-case as a condition?
Why should I denounce the imagination as if it is inhuman,
as if there is a beauty we have yet to witness?

 

The magic of storytelling is something rooted deep within all of us,
Whether we are aware of it or not.
We’ve all experienced those first characters we call imaginary friends,
And though we were too young to realize it, this is where the narrative is born.
Fake fairy wings and toy swords were everyone’s first time saying,
There’s something silent in me that I wish would speak.

And how magnificent is that that even those who are silent are provided with voices,
and from the moment we are born, we are instilled with
the instinct to make fiction as real as you or me?

 

The magic of storytelling is the magic of ancestry.
It is the magic of who we are and who we could be,
Of all the things we have and what we long for,
with longing forever being the feeling that defines writing.
We have grown desensitized to the things that are tangible,
but when has that ever stopped us for yearning for the things that are not?
And let that be our right.

 

The magic of storytelling is the magic of growing up.
Who is to say that our stories dissolve with our youth
when there is life to infinity?
Every age has an individual beauty that must be spoken about,
Must be reminisced on,
And how can there not be stories,
when all of us have one to carry?

 

The magic of storytelling is the magic of everything.
It’s what made us say our dogs ate our homework,
scribble in our diaries about false scenarios with our crushes,
and question the credibility of Romeo and Juliet.
It is how we define what it means to be human, and within that,
what it means to be a writer.

 

The magic of storytelling is the magic of us,
every single one of us,
And that I hold to be fact.

On the occasion of HSPVA Friends’ 17th Annual Encore Event: Stories, benefiting Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. April 11, 2023.