The ghost who wrote in knives:

She was a poet first.

Everything else came afterwards.

Mother. Teacher. Patron saint of everything “basic bitch” aesthetics. A hint of the typical Cancer architect — even if she states that she “didn’t actually believe that shit.” (She totally did, in fact.) Consistently, she would be looking up the soulmate signs, find relief that a Pisces was still the main contender, and be thrilled that she didn’t marry him in vain.

Following her death, many literary critics dedicated an astonishing amount of time to explain who Chel Writes, “really was,” despite the inconvenient fact that none of them actually had any previous knowledge of meeting her. The consensus formed early on: she was a recluse. Too peopley for the world, they said, quoting an interview no one can locate anymore, but it is there. Lost to the streams of the interwebs. She sat. She wrote. She watched the neighbourhood through glass instead of joining it. A tidy theory, load-bearing enough to hang whole psychology on— except for the accounts of her husband remembering her at three different birthday parties last year, along, smashing the remnants of a piñata open with the bat once all the children grabbed their candy. Said it was cathartic while thwacking it until it busted into smitherings. A recluse? Yet she still gets invited to things; she just complains after the fact.

Some critics would say she was the epitome of feminine rage. This interpretation remains popular, largely because it sounds impressive. Less likely, though, might be fairer to state, is the possibility that she was simply hungry, angry, or both — both being the ideal option of choice. They would quote phrases like:

No— you will hear the wrath,

the pain-filled words

as I spit them back out.

A quote from Anger.

When the fuck is my prince going to come?

Disney sold me the lie early,

young enough to swallow it whole—

a man will rise out of the woodwork

and save your ass.

Her poem Where’s My Prince.

Or, the one that they would reach for when they wanted to sound serious:

You reach for something. A bottle. A knife. Anything.

Handle of something sharp in hand.

No action needed. Just a flick upward and between ribs.

Quick. Effective.

"This is for your own good..."

From This is For Your Own Good — proof, they argue, of a woman reclaiming her power from the patriarchy one line at a time. Never mind this is the same woman who couldn’t reclaim a parking spot without apologizing to the cars before her, or who allowed people to sometimes cut in front of her. “One!” She would shout and ram her cart ahead of the second person who had the audacity to try and cut her off. Chel had rules. Though unspoken. There were rules about things.

Same scholars suggest her recurring references shifted the narrative from the rage of childhood into the rage of trauma acquired in early adulthood. It left a lasting impression on her and cultivated a stronger foothold over her in the “later” years to fight off — monsters. Another villain yet to be overcome, they say, still haunted by the metaphors.

Another year passes

Then breath on my neck

Claws up my spine

The smell of something decaying

The sound of something laughing

The monsters waited long enough

.

I didn't cry out.

I didn't run.

Just watched.

Just waited for them to be done.

Monsters Under My Bed.

Whether they were the monsters in her actual head, or actual people crawling through her life, tearing at her — the world will never know. But it always ended the same. Hauntedly beautiful prose before being violated and ripped to shreds. Pillaged as if she were nothing but a coastal city ripe for the taking.

In I hate you:

I hated that paint cans and bubble gum stopped being ordinary things.

That some things could be thrown at me and leave bruises or smear in my hair, leaving me standing in front of the mirror with scissors in hand, cutting away what was left until all I had was a bowl cut in the '90s.

Kids are cruel.

Anger was there in her words and work. Rage first, then the quieter, more pronounced wound underneath peeled back — hurt. The kind that doesn’t announce itself. The festering and bleeding laceration of all of life’s toil and trauma leading up to the very moment when she deemed herself worthy enough to muddle through it and press it to paper. Spilling out the violence into prose. Vomit up the words in a simple act to get it out. But— it didn’t make the darkness go away. She didn’t warm to it either. Just chewed on it. Rolled the hurt and anger and violence around her tongue before she spat it out in whatever shape it needed to form for that particular moment in time.

Each metaphor counters the next: depression, grief, mortality, hurt, pain, rage, and the low iron that was chronic in her life. Never once distinguished from the rest by anyone reading too closely to care.

That is what Chel Writes did. She wasn’t a mysterious woman dealing with the typical things — just someone who had too many stories in a head that was far too loud to keep them all in.

She was not the enigma some wanted her to be. Just a woman — a habitual oversharer, collector of half-finished notebooks, someone who left over ten tabs open on her computer — much to the frustration of her husband, the Pisces. She wrote about mortality, sex, rage, and dealing with mental health with one hand and then countered it profoundly by arguing with the self-checkout machine in the next moment. She was flawed. Quirky. Anxious and that did not improve with age.

Her greatest achievement, perhaps, was convincing the generations of readers to come that every metaphor didn’t carry a profound secret. Sometimes the curtains were just gray. Sometimes the monster was the trauma, unhealed and decomposing in prose. Sometimes she just thought things were cool in her stories so she added them.

Unfortunately, she’s no longer around to tell us which was which, and this critic has bills to pay.