When I can't write
When I can’t write, I feel a knot in my chest. A building pressure tight like a bullet proof vest and an itching in my hands that just will not rest.
It’s not a lack of paper and pen, I’ll scratch poems onto the walls. Type them on my phone as I walk through the halls, write in blue ink on school bathroom stalls. The problem is a lack of something that calls
to me, not physical things but vocabulary. Cause I can always write, but without soul It just doesn’t sound right.
Words fly away like birds and leap away like bunnies, I’m almost inspired by the way they evade me.
When I can’t write it’s not a thesaurus I turn to. Nor is it a dictionary, because it’s not words that are missing but meaning. A blank sheet of paper like snow, white and gleaming, so much potential I just want to pour myself onto it, bleeding
But the blood does not come. The paper stays white and pristine and unmarked as I claw around in the dark twisting and turning my fingers and pen through the bloody guts of a world of words that I just cannot see within.
The heavy mass in my stomach grows and grows
But the words still won’t flow,
when I can’t write.
Copyright © Ilaria Hobbs | Year Posted 2023
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