The art of MY existence

I am very good at knowing things.

Stupid things, mostly.

The kind of things that sit uselessly
inside the skull until somebody mentions them
and suddenly there is a lecture
trying to escape my mouth.

I know how things are made.
I know how they fit together.
I know what colour something should be
before I have even found the paint.

Give me a pen
and I will fill the corner of a page
with little creatures.

Give me cardboard
and I will give it architecture.

Give me clay, wire, beads, thread—
anything really,
anything small enough to hold
and strange enough to become something—

and my hands stop being awkward.

They know.

My hands know me better than I do.

They know how to shade an eye
without thinking about it.

They know how much pressure
a ballpoint can take.

They know how to make a monster
look like it has been waiting
inside the paper for years.

My mouth is less reliable.

Ask me something in class
and watch the miracle reverse itself.

Because I know the answer.

I KNOW the answer.

It is right there,
bright as a struck match,
fully formed—

until you look at me.

Then the match goes out.

Then my thoughts become
a box of tangled earphones.

Then I become painfully aware
of my hands.

Where are my hands?

Why are my hands like that?

Am I looking at you too much?

Not enough?

Was that voice normal?

Did I sound stupid?

Was that joke actually funny
or did everyone just pity-laugh?

And somewhere beneath all of this,
the answer is still standing there,

patiently,

like:

hello?

I could explain an entire fictional universe
without breathing.

I could tell you why Strahd
is frightening beyond the obvious.

I could ruin a campaign
with one sentence.

I could sit behind a DM screen
and become cruel enough
to kill everyone I love.

I could bring Vecna into the room
and make him feel real.

I could make maps.

I could make lore.

I could make a world
with rules so intricate
that nobody gets lost.

Funny.

I cannot always find my way
through a conversation.

In my worlds,
every monster has a reason.

Every door has a lock.

Every curse has an origin.

Every strange thing
gets a name eventually.

Maybe that is why I keep making them.

Maybe I like things
that can be understood
if you stare at them long enough.

Maybe I like dragons
because nobody expects a dragon
to know how to make small talk.

Maybe I like monsters
because monsters are honest
about having teeth.

I am still the kid
who gets too excited
about something nobody asked about.

Still the kid
who knows some completely unnecessary fact
and physically has to stop himself
from saying it.

Still the kid
who can make something beautiful
with a stupid pen
and then spend ten minutes
wondering whether it is
actually beautiful
or whether someone will laugh.

Still the kid
who would rather show you
a thing he made
than explain himself.

There is a strange little country
inside my head.

It is crowded.

It is loud.

It has dragons in it
and half-finished drawings
and scraps of ideas
and facts with nowhere to go.

It has entire conversations
that never leave my mouth.

It has versions of me
that are loud enough
to fill a room.

And then there is me,

standing outside the classroom door,

trying to remember
how to be a person
in front of other people.

So maybe I am not quiet.

Maybe I am simply
a very loud person
with the volume trapped inside.

And maybe the only proof
that I was ever here

is the little trail I leave behind—

ink in the margins,

paint under my fingernails,

a badly drawn monster
on the corner of a desk,

a campaign nobody will forget,

a world built out of scraps,

a thousand things I knew
but couldn't say,

and one more unfinished creature
waiting patiently

for my hands
to tell it what it is.