The only reason there was a typewriter on my desk in the first place was because I had a cast on my arm. That makes it sound like the cast was for fun. It wasn’t. The real story lives between the lines, and as in my books, I will leave it there so those who know trauma can find it. Truth in the white space where no one talks about it. Truth in the white space takes up room in the pockets. No one can see it. Everyone can see it. Not even I could see it. In the end, I was lucky there was a typewriter on my desk because I wrote my first novel on it. It was about a woman trapped in the wrong place. [Your pockets are bulging now.] I was twenty-four.

Do you see how it was always art? The part that told you not to speak, the part you ate along with your dinner? The part when what people did to you — made you the sinner?

My life has been a mountain climb. My mother packed my ruck. Told me about the white space without saying a word. The ruck was empty. I filled it. She told me: some people will love you / some people will hate you. I filled it. She told me: do your very best. I filled it. She told me: stand tall for the people who can’t. She didn’t know I was one of them, kept my words in my belly, ’til a man came along and proved emetic. I filled it. Now everything I do is purge like Frida. “I paint my own reality.” My white space. The empty ruck. The mountain climb. Not a word isn’t coming from the deep. It started with confusion — hiding in any room that would lock, usually bathrooms. A cast on my arm. A borrowed set of keys and ribbon. There’s no way to write an essay about things that big, so I wrote you this poem. A song. A rap. Put it to music. Make it your own sack and use it. Fill it with truth. Your white space, the best part of you. Be scared but do it anyway.

A.S. King in 1992. Photo (c) A.S. King.

Before I was a writer, I was a photographer with gallery shows and big ideas at twenty-two, and one day I had to ask permission for time to make art. One day I had to ask permission for space to make art. Permission denied eyeroll. I took this picture anyway — six months before the bathrooms, two years before the cast. It would be my last picture. The end of my art. I can see in my eyes the ruck, the white space, your bulging pockets. I can see in my eyes the determination to win something out of a mistake I didn’t know I’d have to escape. I didn’t know yet about my books — where that look in my eyes would reside between the lines. I didn’t know yet about that first part of what my mom said. Some people will love you. Some people. Will love you.

From the May/June 2025 special issue of The Horn Book Magazine: Perception and Reality. Find more in the "Reality Reimagined" series here.

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