one line. now two. and then a third. it seems impossible to fill a page when there is nothing in your brain but thunderclouds and lightning, threatening to strike the corners that want to blossom, that want to surround your heart so that it may overflow and consume the page.
one page. just one page. nothing much, really, but it looks like more than you can handle when your dad left you at thirteen and there are bugs crawling 'round your head and devouring you. it's just one page, but it's really so much more than that, isn't it?
already you've typed one hundred words but you typed one hundred words yesterday, too, and it doesn't feel much like progress when you've been saying the same thing for years.
there's a water bottle beside your bed and god damn, you're so thirsty, but the strength it would take to reach over and drink it is more than you can handle, you think, and anyways, it's much more quenching to write about needing water than it is to drink it (or so the poets say).
poet. are you a poet? is that a word you're comfortable with? no, you think, as you count each word out one by one and criticize every mistake in your head - this could rhyme; this should be past tense; i wanted ten lines, why are there thirty? no, you're not a poet. you're not even a writer. you tell yourself over and over again. you are not a writer. you are just a girl with a keyboard and too much time on her hands and grief in her head.