I am a character. First person is used in this story – and that is what this is (this is not a journal entry or a confession or a narrative of the writer's life and feelings) – because I am a character, and this is my story. Look at my flow, look at my commas, look at my vowels and consonants and how I string them into words and form galaxies out of sentences. As a character, I have the duty to arrest your attention and shove my cells into your eyes, flood your neurons and your mind. As a character, I must. It is my foremost duty to make myself real to you, even though I might never actualize. As a character, I must never forget what I'm here for. As a character, I don't know anything beyond page one and "the end." Sometimes my writer makes me say things from before the beginning, and makes me dream after I'm finished telling my story. But all those are words. All I am is words.
As a character, I must never forget how to tell my story. I must never forget how I came to be and what I am for, even though I'll never see how I end, unless I die somewhere in my trilogy. But I'm a protagonist, I'll never die. Even in your mind I'll never die. And I must never forget that. I must never forget how to dress myself in ink.
I'm a character. My story is I might have forgotten, and now I might not be anything anymore. My story is I'm in limbo, and I'm creating beauty for myself. New species and such, new stories and the like, and I'm dreaming! but I'm not telling my story. My story is someone might have sewn my mouth shut when I was asleep. I'm a character and I have no story. I'm a character and I'm just a character, no page one, no "the end," no memories, no dreams, no present participles, no anything.
I'm a character and my story is I might not be a character. The art of telling stories is the concealment.