Blocked.

What I really want to say is
nothing
that I have nothing to say
nothing important or groundbreaking
or earthshaking or restorative or reclamative
or healing or offering
in the way that these women do

in the way that everyone else around me seems to
nothing was so devastating so traumatic
so deprecating
that I have not risen above it
and yet
still sink down into it
a brown quicksand that I claw and

wrangle
and always manage to climb out from
because it will not drag me down
I will not let it drag me down
but this good, this great
these intangible aspirations
that everyone's already clamored at

scooped up and carried in their own
palms
and out through their own voices
and bled through the ink on their own fingertips
they feel so beyond me
murk and mist thick to dampen my breath
and suffocate my lungs when I try

try to take it in
and quick, so incredibly, undeniably fast and loose
that when I reach out
fingers scraping to wrest it, to form it, to mold
and manipulate and use this density
for something other than stagnancy and hope

my fingers catch evaporation
and my nails are left with dirt and grit
and teardrops and
air
where words and genius should have
been held
should have been formed
and the steam trail
pecks and blisters

at the nerves risen up to my skin
tingling the sharp needles of nothing
good, nothing
great
drilling, boring hollows into my bone
into my meat
into that inner me
under the ribs and slick in the marrow

that settles into a gangrenous hope
a rotting genius
and diseased could-haves
spreading in burning should-haves
until the mind is riddled with the
black pockets of devouring nevers
and lethal can'ts.

2012. Ami Lovelace.  All Rights Reserved.


Content Copyright 2011. Ami Lovelace. All Rights Reserved.