I asked my creative writing teacher
What to do about my writers block
And she told me to start with something simple,
To write about what I know,
I would,
But I don’t know how to make
The three hours I spent crying on the kitchen floor yesterday
Poetic,
I don’t know how to weave words
Out of my perpetual exhaustion,
I don’t know how to make you want to hear about
The way I keep forgetting how breathing works,
I don’t know how to make the fact
That this morning I found myself
Wishing that nothing loved me
So I would no longer feel obligated to live
Into something beautiful,
I don’t know how to turn my depression into poetry

I asked my philosophy teacher
What to do about my writers block
And she told me I had to find the place inside me
Where the poetry comes from
And spend a few hours there by myself,
But the place where my poems come from
Is ugly and raw,
A playground made of twisted up scrap metal
And discarded razor blades,
And the words that do manage to escape from there
Are so shockingly pathetic, so alarmingly hideous,
After they claw their way out
They unfurl their wings too warped to support flight,
They examine their fragile, papery skin,
Taking note of the bruises around their wrists
From the handcuffs,
Taking note of the bruises around their necks
From the days I lost control,
I am too afraid to pick through that wasteland alone

Desperate, I asked my eleven year old sister
What to do about my writers block
And she told me to write anyway,
I told her that I can’t write anymore,
That that’s the problem,
And she told me that writers are in charge of words
Not the other way around,
She told me that can’t is only a word
If I allow it to be one,
So here I am,
Looking at the pencil in my hand
As if it is an old friend I forgot about entirely
And then ran into at a coffee shop at two in the morning,
Here I am,
Hoping that writing poetry is like riding a bike
And once you figure it out it becomes ingrained in your bones,
Ignoring the fact that I never learned how to ride a bike
So I have no idea what people mean when they say that,
Here I am,
Experimentally rolling deja vu tinged words around in my mouth,
Running my tongue over my letter stained teeth
And hoping things will start to taste familiar soon,
Here I am.