i have lost passion for reading and writing
and in doing so, lost myself
you see, that was my pride.
that was my one talent.
my one victory.
i may not be a dancer or a gymnast or a musician like my sister
but i am good at this, at telling a story,
at making an imagination come alive,
something she could never grasp a hold of.
no, her's were plain.
dull.
they lacked...
color, i guess.
maybe i didn't lose my passion for it, i thought.
after all, i can write poetry.
oh, but that is not the same.
that is in no way the same.
i'll sit there with the blue blinking bar
it seems like a glare, it's mocking me, it's taunting me
write something. write something, write something, write something.
after all, you're in the top of your grade, aren't you?
yes. i was.
and then i fell from the podium.
i tripped and landed on my face.
i had straight A's in english.
oh, that is hilarious.
fake it till you make it, right?
no, this isn't about grades.
listen.
i could bring new colors to life
i could breathe into existence
the most vague of words.
i could create a world
entirely new.
i was a god.
the words spun out of me like a spindle weaving gold
i could write
the most magnificent of tragedies
better than grimm's
i was an artist
who painted with their words
and the canvas
was marvelous.
it was beautiful in every hue
violet, fuchsia, magenta and indigo
it was beautiful.
i could write a world upon the clouds
far away, second star to the right
i wrote what i dreamed
i wrote what i wanted
i wrote what i wished for
i wrote what i needed
i wrote what i could not have.
and that is funny
for what i ever wrote about
was happiness.
and months went by and i knew i was slipping
i knew
i felt the ice beneath my feet begin to thaw
i was thinning
something was wrong, something was very wrong
and then the breath was knocked out of me
as i noticed the pattern and understood the reason why
because i had stopped reading.
i fell beneath the ice.
it was cold, dark.
the frozen surface above mocked me,
shining like a star,
just out of reach.
i thought it was getting darker
because i was going deeper
but no.
it was because
if it could not bring me to the darkness
it would bring the darkness to me.
my hands pressed against the ice,
the water rising around the edges of my face,
a smudged, blurred, contorted, twisted version
of what i was.
and the water smashed me against the hard surface
and it rose around my body
it crawled its way into my ears
my nostrils
my mouth
my eyes
my lungs.
and i was enveloped in the ice
of my own numb heart.
my own cold tears
because once again
the ice has taken another writer
another creator
-because we are the puppets of our own pens
because a writer
never lives
because they only write their story,
they do not live it.
i fell beneath the ice
and met with the bodies of a million other writers
their last words were stained onto their skin
carved like an eternal mockery
these are your words
and you will pay for them.
because their faces
either rise
or crumble
when you ask them,
what if all your stories came to life?
how fucked would you be?
i wrote something
about forgetting
and that is what i did.
i forgot how to write
or maybe, in other words,
i forgot how to breathe.
