More Than That

Despite the fact that they do not exist,
I find that they live in my reality
As if they breathe
And have hearts that beat with blood.
Instead, they thrive
Only inside my mind
And my words.
They bleed into my personality
And they share my senses.
I laugh at things
That only they would find funny
And I shiver at night
From their imagined demons.
They are more than an idea;
They are alive,
Just not in the sense that counts.
I no longer control their thoughts,
But instead, I find them shaping mine.
They infect my fingers with stories to write
And they have invaded my dreams.

They are my characters.
The people I found in times of need
Or during sparks of creativity.
Found, not created,
Because although they only live through me,
They came to me;
In gusts of breath
Or stirs of imagination,
They came.
Carting their stories and ideas and morals,
They came and stayed
And I find myself in the company of many
Even when I am alone.

This is the curse
And the joy of being a writer.
I am dripping with the sins
Committed by those I hold inside.
And if you look closely,
My eyes are a kaleidoscope
Of their different colored souls.
When I look in the mirror,
I sometimes find them there,
Though only for a heartbeat,
Just long enough to reassure me that they are there.
And I know they will not leave me
Until their stories are complete,
Until I have lived every scream they have experienced,
Until I have cracks in my heart and fractures in my mind.
They won't leave until they are sure I will never forget
The feeling of their joy or sadness
Or the spike of the adrenaline
When they finally reach forward to grasp immortality.

They are my characters.
They live only in my stories and my soul.
I like to believe that I am in charge of them
But I know if they tell me to breathe,
I am already gasping
And if they tell me to sleep,
I am already falling.
And I know they will not leave me
Until you too are affected by their stories,
Until you too are crying over their victories
And laughing over their failures.
They will not stop until all know who they are
And their names become as imbedded in your fingerprints
As they are in mine.
So, until that happens, here I stand,
Fingertips dripping with the ink of a thousand stories,
With the blood of a thousand full-mooned skies
And with the characters
That will always hold as tightly to me
As I do to them.