i do believe in fairies. i do. i do.
the words used to mean something to me. they did. they did. now they are as empty as everything else. they have run over my tongue too many times, dropping bits of magic until they were out. leaving behind hope and meaning piece by piece until they become no more than a jumble of letters my brain can no longer make sense of.
i did believe in fairies. i did. i did.
a need to create is burning just behind my eyes. my fingers are itching to write, but the words that used to be my best friends have abandoned me. i used to hold them closer than the breath that i pull absently from the air. the words are gone, but their echos are left ricocheting in my body, bouncing off my stomach and zigzagging down my trachea like a long forgotten call to what used to be.
a lump forms in my aching throat and my eyes prickle, but i am not sad. am i? my stomach is fluttering like the wings of seven hundred trapped butterflies, but i do not think that i am nervous. at least, there is nothing to be nervous about. my skin burns hot with a flash of what could have been anger but instead was nothing. it is always nothing now. i can't breathe and my trembling fingers are beginning to go numb, but my mind is empty. nothing. nothing. nothing.
maybe if i found my words, it could be something.
i will believe in fairies. i will. i will.
i used to live with my feet planted firmly in the past and my head floating in the future, but somehow i found myself in the present, and i think i may be stuck here where reality glares down at me from directly above. there are no lurking shadows or dark corners for surprises to hide in. there is only this. there is only now. and i need to find a way out.
they tell you to grow up and live in the moment and i always swore that i wouldn't. but then i did. they tell you that it's the thought that counts, but they're wrong. because i didn't mean to do this, but i am stuck here anyway. i used to think that if you cut me open, ink would leak from my veins and flowery words would bubble from my lips. my lungs would be filled with fairydust and every single one of bones would be a pen. if you cut me open now all you'd see is a mess of sliced bones and severed arteries and warm blood that doesn't know where to go anymore. i used to think that i was my words, but now i'm thinking that i am my blood. moving through the paths set out for me without thought. doing the same thing over and over and over again until i can't do anything else.
but if i could change once, i could do it again.
i will look for my words and i will find the magic again. i will. i will.
*******
the thing about writing is that you can find your groove where everything you write is right, and then you can stop writing for far too long, and you don't think that you can forget how to do it, but you can. you believe the words and ideas and images will be there waiting for you whenever you decide to come back, but they're not. and it's scary to know how quickly the thing you are good at can become the thing that you used to be good at. it's so scary that sometimes you have to just pretend that nothing is wrong and lose yourself in other people's words instead of your own. but eventually you have to sit down and write pages and pages of bad stuff and pick pieces out of them that maybe could be okay and put them together into a makeshift poem that is not in your groove and will never be completely right but will get you back on the horse. that's the secret to life, you know. you need to find that one horse that's meant for you and just ride it. you can hop on and off, but be careful, because if you're off for too long, you'll get trampled by the stampede.
i'm setting a goal for this year to write one million words. anything i write that uses my voice and is not correspondence will count towards this goal (meaning blog posts and poems and short stories and novels and some school work and journal entries and, well, you get the idea) starting with this post. i'll track my words over on the sidebar where my nano word count sits every november so you can guilt me into not slacking. here's to writing.
*Unwritten - Natasha Bedingfield
the words used to mean something to me. they did. they did. now they are as empty as everything else. they have run over my tongue too many times, dropping bits of magic until they were out. leaving behind hope and meaning piece by piece until they become no more than a jumble of letters my brain can no longer make sense of.
i did believe in fairies. i did. i did.
a need to create is burning just behind my eyes. my fingers are itching to write, but the words that used to be my best friends have abandoned me. i used to hold them closer than the breath that i pull absently from the air. the words are gone, but their echos are left ricocheting in my body, bouncing off my stomach and zigzagging down my trachea like a long forgotten call to what used to be.
a lump forms in my aching throat and my eyes prickle, but i am not sad. am i? my stomach is fluttering like the wings of seven hundred trapped butterflies, but i do not think that i am nervous. at least, there is nothing to be nervous about. my skin burns hot with a flash of what could have been anger but instead was nothing. it is always nothing now. i can't breathe and my trembling fingers are beginning to go numb, but my mind is empty. nothing. nothing. nothing.
maybe if i found my words, it could be something.
i will believe in fairies. i will. i will.
i used to live with my feet planted firmly in the past and my head floating in the future, but somehow i found myself in the present, and i think i may be stuck here where reality glares down at me from directly above. there are no lurking shadows or dark corners for surprises to hide in. there is only this. there is only now. and i need to find a way out.
they tell you to grow up and live in the moment and i always swore that i wouldn't. but then i did. they tell you that it's the thought that counts, but they're wrong. because i didn't mean to do this, but i am stuck here anyway. i used to think that if you cut me open, ink would leak from my veins and flowery words would bubble from my lips. my lungs would be filled with fairydust and every single one of bones would be a pen. if you cut me open now all you'd see is a mess of sliced bones and severed arteries and warm blood that doesn't know where to go anymore. i used to think that i was my words, but now i'm thinking that i am my blood. moving through the paths set out for me without thought. doing the same thing over and over and over again until i can't do anything else.
but if i could change once, i could do it again.
i will look for my words and i will find the magic again. i will. i will.
*******
the thing about writing is that you can find your groove where everything you write is right, and then you can stop writing for far too long, and you don't think that you can forget how to do it, but you can. you believe the words and ideas and images will be there waiting for you whenever you decide to come back, but they're not. and it's scary to know how quickly the thing you are good at can become the thing that you used to be good at. it's so scary that sometimes you have to just pretend that nothing is wrong and lose yourself in other people's words instead of your own. but eventually you have to sit down and write pages and pages of bad stuff and pick pieces out of them that maybe could be okay and put them together into a makeshift poem that is not in your groove and will never be completely right but will get you back on the horse. that's the secret to life, you know. you need to find that one horse that's meant for you and just ride it. you can hop on and off, but be careful, because if you're off for too long, you'll get trampled by the stampede.
i'm setting a goal for this year to write one million words. anything i write that uses my voice and is not correspondence will count towards this goal (meaning blog posts and poems and short stories and novels and some school work and journal entries and, well, you get the idea) starting with this post. i'll track my words over on the sidebar where my nano word count sits every november so you can guilt me into not slacking. here's to writing.
*Unwritten - Natasha Bedingfield
I love this!
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