Blank Pages

The first page, a long letter

Full of scribbles and ink blots and spelling mistakes

The caricatures of a child

Dancing across the lines,

Breathing life into the book.

A comment here, a questions there

Words spilling over pages;

A future all planned out

As perfect as a fairy tale

Rated "G" for "all ages".

Page ten,

A little gloomy.

The scene changing drastically,

Words weaving themselves into poisonous webs

Which spread across the pages.

The innocent scribbles of a child

Withering away to nothing more

Than lethargic lines trailing over the pages.

Page twenty onward,

My adolescent years

All crumpled, ripped and slashes

With little mercy.

The pages shriveled from the bitter cold

As autumn leaves

Without the rainbow colour.

And any detail

Washed away by a monsoon of tears

With bloody scars Leaving crimson trails.

Page twenty-nine, thirty

A breath of colour

A hint of rosy pink.

Hope peeks its fragile form

Between the lines and the letters

Eyes innocent, sanguine.

The lifeless pages slowly resurrect,

The loops drawn bigger and wider

Words longer and stronger,

Black ink seeping into the paper darker and deadlier.

A tide of emotion building over the pages and -

Nothing.

Page after page,

Blank, coloured a pristine white

Like freshly fallen snow.

Not a speck of dust or wrinkle present,

A perfect nothingness

Row after row.

I raise the quill above my rainbow palette

Afraid to choose the inapt shade of pastel green.

Beofre me is an artist's canvas

My present, that I begin to write

When I am nineteen.