"I have hated words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right." - Markus Zusak

I love writing and I want to do it forever. Every time I have the opportunity to sit down and write, a part of me breaks and a part of me heals and I would like to participate in this excruciating tug of war as long as we both shall live. Arranging words, choosing the right ones, deciding the wrong ones, editing and re-editing, it's an art form.

I am shameful for when I take advantage of it. As an Odyssey writer, it is easy for my weekly deadlines to sneak up on me sometimes, possibly leaving me rushed and half-hearted. I decided I owe a sincere and serious article not only to my readers but also to myself.

This week I have decided to share an elegy that's in my book that I published last September, The Ubiquity of it All.

"An Elegy" can be to mourn, to be nostalgic, or to be musical. It's a serious reflection, and I cannot think of anything more serious and constant that I feel than the love and respect I have for emotion, artists, and of course, my best friend.

I hope you love this elegy, I hope you hate this elegy, and above all, I hope it doesn't find you feeling neutral at the end. My biggest fear when I write is that I am unable to pull on the strings of emotion finely tuned within all of us. My elegy and I don't expect a song or a chord, but we hope your strings are plucked nonetheless.

An elegy, the most serious, profound piece of writing a poet can muster up, yet I still find this arrangement of letters on a single page insufficient when praising you, my best friend.

I have come to the conclusion I am a never-ending artwork, Jackson Pollock, and Van Gogh takes turns decorating my existence, excitement, sadness, splatters of joy, blossoms of sorrow, back and forth and back and forth, and they'll never be finished. I'll never wake up and whisper "la fin" to them. And you are the first soul who isn't waiting for them to drop the brush.

You don't stand there beside me, on the outside, as if behind some velvet rope at a museum, criticizing these men. No, you have found a brush of your own. You join them. You add to my masterpiece. You rinse off Van Gogh's brushes when the sadness wins when I take after him and I am forced to eat yellow paint desperate to feel something that resembles color, not the absence of it. You suggest hues to Pollock as he mimics the vibrations of my laugh upon a canvas, greens and blues, primary colors for these primary emotions, explaining to him where each streak should be placed to match the wrinkles of my eyes. You are not a critic, you do not suggest better paint or a different brush. You have formed new pigments out of your presence that I never knew could exist, and they are now added to my masterpiece, I wear you like that old coat you can't get rid of because it smells and feels like home no matter how much time has passed and you have cultivated these parts of me that are more than Vincent and Jackson could have ever invented because their ancient voices are dull and lifeless over your timeless roar.

You are a thread in every roped experience I've ever breathed, you are the ticket to this exhibit, you are the end of the sentence that picks up where I leave off and I am sorry this is just a rambled elegy when you deserve an endless galaxy.

Just know I saved every last drop of red to say I love you, and that I always will. I cannot fathom how you praise and observe my being, always failing to realize you are its biggest contributor, you are a piece of me deserving this same praise, and I will never stop trying to drown you in it.

Love, Jackson, Vincent, and Me.