I Write For You

I no longer write for a one-person audience
with stories behind the words.

I write for you, reader
for you, hopeless
for you, lonely

I'm not the hand on your shoulder
or the stretcher
carrying you to safety
I'm not here to wade in your troubles
and fry them with the littler fish
I'm just the medium:
the charcoal, the paint, the camera

and if someone has already stapled words together
in the exact same way that I have,
that's fine.

just know that if I truly wrote for myself
simply to have the words there,
my paper would be white as death.