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.