pink notebook
I hold a fancy pen, poised for attack, and tell myself words will come out like vomit.
I tell myself I can't help but write; it's what I'm meant to do.
I tell myself one day I'll wake up and my book will be written.
It will be perfect, I say, on the first try, like when I was born and I breathed --
It was hard, but I remember only easy --
been breathing too long to think otherwise --
yet breathing is hard. It's really hard.
The first story, I wrote in an office. My dad had an appointment in the other room.
I sat in a chair as a trained professional stuck needles in him to relieve pain.
It was dark outside and I was six.
I had a pink notebook and my mom helped me spell and I wrote about princesses sharing their food with their pets and their friends in a forest so deep you could swim in it.
But it wasn't that detailed.
It was a page, with a plot and a point.
I've lost both of those.
Now when I write I have neither --
I only have words, with no way to arrange them.
We are a labyrinth put through a meat grinder
Baked at 400 degrees above freezing
Boiled at absolute zero and melted
Sewn into clothing we like to call skin
Dreams thoughts arguments
Petty lies.
That's what I am.
I'm only words.
I'm only what you make of me.
