WRITER’S BLOCK
Musings.
I’m tired, too tired. My eyes ache with a burn that only happens in my shins from running too long. It’s a distant, but familiar ache. Putting on my glasses and tossing out my contacts would aid my discomfort, but that would require movement. I’m paralyzed with full ability. If I rub my eyes hard enough and dig in with the heel of my palms I can see and feel stars.
My glass is empty. Amber liquid’s vacant from a glass prison. My world spins but it’s not from a drink. My page is more empty than my glass. The pen in my hand is heavier than the deadlines that loom over me. They promise death and destruction if I don’t give them what they desire.
The clock chimes a song once, followed by a halved version of the first melody. It’s too late for a man of my age to be awake. I do not have the excuse of youth and vitality to aid my sleepless nights. Even if my page was leaking with words and images, I’d still find myself in a wakeful fit.
The ticking of the clock knocks in my head, banging from the left to the right. It has nothing to reverberate off of, spending its time ricocheting in perfect tandem between the sides of my skull.
The darkness of the room consumes me. It smokes out my brain and stalls my thoughts. They plunge into darkness, with no room for the light of inspiration. My weary mind wanders, bumping and bruising against the walls of limitations and expectations.
There is nothing more terrifying than a blank page.
Why I thought I was ever good at this, I’d never know. I hear the howls of fear and insecurity banging at my door, threatening to bite at my knees and drag my dead body down to the depths of hell. The invisible killers, the hellhounds of imagination and creativity, coming to get me. Hmph.
Perhaps I deserve it. I can’t sleep when I have an idea, spending winkless nights writing until my fingers blister. I can’t sleep when my mind is vacant, waking from short bursts of sleep and fighting against seeping doubts in my sheets. Sleep calls to me when I need it the least. When I want it the most, she teases me and leaves like the disgusting dame she is.
Sometimes, fleeting ideas are the worst. You’re in a dry spell for god knows how long and she comes along for a quick fuck and is running away before you can manage to write down the details about how you felt. I’ve broken a pen or two in those moments. The anger at a lost idea, one that blossomed as beautifully as the petals of the early spring, gone in the darkness and cold right as your pen touches the paper.
A man could lose his mind over that, I’m telling you.
