Like a fountain you drink from when you're hungry for ideas, people always ask where it comes from, like inspiration is a destination. What inspires you? they inquire at readings, at parties, in interviews that seem like cross-examination.
She is always speechless. The truth sounds too dark: everything I have survived that should have killed me inspires me. My father leaving inspires me, and my mother pretends everything is okay. Every guy who spoke across me in meetings is my source of inspiration. When I described the panic attacks, my inspiration is the therapist who stated have you experimented with yoga? Minimum salary, maximum effort, and the gap between the two inspire me.
Frankly, resentment inspires me. Spite that the world sought to make me tiny and I learned to fill space using words instead. You cannot, though, declare that at parties. She smiles then and says something ambiguous about lived experience and the human condition, and monitors them to see them nod like that means anything. Survival is my muse. Everything else is merely packaging.