I don’t want to

The second and third lines of this poem are not entirely true. I wrote this when I had writer's block, and it did help.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In. Out.

I can't write. 

I read somewhere that writing about writer's block helps.

It doesn't.

Crumpled paper surrounds me, broken pencil tips reflect my mind.

Tears of frstration.

Pencil shaving spilled.

Ripped post-its.

Pulling my hair, banging my forehead on my desk.

Nothing helps.

Calm down.

Breathe in.

Out.

In.

Out.

In.

Out.

In.

Out.

A sketchbook.

Sharpen a new pencil.

Ideas flow, not in words, but in art.

Conveying ideas in another form.

In.

Out.

In.

Out. 

I wrote this some weeks ago. It's a poem and not, a rant and a wish, but mostly, a peek inside my head. (The full piece is much longer, this has been edited for content. Anya is my best friend. During the time of writing, we were having a fight.)

———

insecure, they say, strange, alone, afraid. all these words that apply to you: they speak them in solidarity, to say that you are not forsaken.

but somehow, it only makes you feel worse. it doesn’t feel like they get it because they’re wrong. it doesn’t feel like awful and it doesn’t feel like scared: it feels like dying. it feels like you’re in a sea of people and thoughts and confusion and your lungs, your head, are cottony and wet. it feels like fire in your head, consuming everything you are and love, licking with destructive pleasure across the base of your skull. it feels like being lost in the arctic, with the cold on your cheeks, and it feels like your heart is freezing, slowly, into something not quite human.

it seems so much easier to stop trying, to give yourself up to the wind and the flames and the water. you want to crawl inside someone else's world and breathe their air until you forget about everyone you ever were and are.

anya doesn’t like them, but you love fantasy books in a way that you can’t quitke explain. they’re so real but so unreal, a beautifully compact escape from everything that’s inside you. you can tumble into worlds that are more fascinating than yours and do things that you wish you could and fall in love and fly.

you sit in class and wish, with every fiber of your being, that you lived in the otherlands, that you went to border camp, that you could meet dryads and elves and harpies, that you could sword fight with serene and listen to elliot mouth off to teachers and have problems that, at least, are not your own.

you have food and shelter and good grades and parents that love you and the best, most brilliant friends in the world. but right now, you want nothing more than for someone to ask if you’re okay, to notice that you’re not. you want someone to hold you and let you cry into their shoulder, someone to tell you everything you didn’t know you needed to hear. you want someone that you can talk to about anything and someone that will listen.

you do not have anyone like that.

once, maybe it could have been anya, but you and anya have stopped saying “how are you?”. you have stopped saying much at all. she looks not at you, but you and you feel like a ghost: undead, invisible.

if she asked you, if she shoved aside the silliness and angry unsent text messages that's built a wall between you, you don’t think you would be able to lie. if she asked you, you would have to tell her the truth, you’d have to say, “i am not okay today”. if she asked you, you’d have to tell her everything.

you really, really, want her to ask. you really, really, want her to notice. you really, really, want her to care. she doesn’t ask. she doesn't notice. no one does, because this is how it goes. no one pays as much attention to you as you think they do.

you bite the inside of your cheek until your mouth tastes like blood, salty and sharp; you hold your breath until spots dance in front of your eyes; you dig your fingernails into your palms until you think your brain will burst with the pain. your eyes prick with tears and you blink until they curl, abashed, back inside your skull, only to wriggle back out again a few minutes later.

all-nighter [a collection of haikus]

let's stay up to watch 

the sun rise, mirrored purple

nightclouds in our eyes

paint bucket spilled on

black canvas, red sun rising 

above the meadows

breathe in soft, look out

through the windows, we witness

a day being born

above frosted grass

and hazy fog obscuring

the telepone wires

~~~

Trying to write a poem using just haikus. This is actually really fun, I challenge you all to do it!