written 11 February 2026
Paper torn from notebooks lies balled up on the floor
because a thing that I once loved is feeling more like a chore,
and all the drafts that sit abandoned, gathering dust on my desk
or forgotten in my notes app, appear to me grotesque
as I claw at a vanishing version of me
that was once somehow able to write poetry
but which, I fear, is another casualty
of leaving the spaces that nourished my creative energy
to instead sit under fluorescent lights
while I stare at a monitor each and every night
and miss the scent of books and the crinkles by your eyes
and the hours we'd converse and the plans we'd devise
because it turns out, without it,
I revert to a version of me that I no longer recognize.
And now the flowery words that once came easily to me
are stuck in some far corner of my memory
that leaves my lines broken and my rhythm flawed;
the rhymes won't come and the metre's all wrong;
I've got all these ideas I just can't seem to convey
because my similes are trite; my subjects are cliché;
my imagery is bland; my metaphors are stale;
my once vibrant language is turning pale;
all my attempts at alliteration fail;
all of my creative energy is gone.
Something inside of me has died since leaving home,
and I no longer remember how to write a poem.