i'm a writer

Give me a pen
  and enough paper
  and i can write you an impassioned
    novel
 on my thoughts
  my feelings
  everything about myself.
   i can be direct,
   discuss things that would normally
    terrify me to admit;
 i can be open about
  depression
   anxiety
   my feelings
everything there is.
Ask me to vocalize these things
  and i stumble
   stutter
  the glottal stops i thought were trained
    out of me by a particularly neurotic
   high school English teacher
   becoming all my words
i will tell you ten thousand
   stories
  about everything and anything
   except what i'm supposed
   to be talking about.
i've never understood
   this disconnect
  between writing and speaking -
   surely either way
 it's the same words in the same brain
   and they ought to come out the same.
  But with paper,
   i can edit, re-edit, rewrite,
   perfect each line and word
   in ways that speech has never offered.
  i don't have to worry (and sometimes,
    worry becomes all i am)
    about misspeaking,
   misphrasing,
   making things seem less important
   than they are
   or more.
i have a chance to say precisely what i mean to,
   rather than a crude, stammered approximation
   of gratitude
   or pain
    or love
   or fear
or anything else.