The Process

I can’t do this. I don’t know why I ever thought I could. No one else thinks I can. Staring at this blank screen I wish I had never discovered words. How they sneak past your defenses and make their home in the very core of your being. How they make you feel. How they make you wonder. How they make you thirsty with an unquenchable thirst.

Seconds turn to hours, turn to weeks, turn to years and still I am here. Waiting, simply waiting. Fingers resting patiently on the home keys like perfect little soldiers waiting for a command. Do they know their General has gone mad?

Where is my voice? I have sold it to a sea witch in exchange for a pair of legs. Damn these feeble legs! They cannot take me where I want to go.

I sit at the spring and wait. It is no longer a spring flowing with sweet waters. It is a stinking cesspool. I stir the stagnant pool with a tinge of hope sitting on the edge of my heart. “Let there be something here; something, anything.” I pray but my bootless cries are heavy and so they lay shattered on the ground, unheard. Only dysentery waits for me here.

My soul runs. I chase it down and like Jacob and the angle we thrash about. Blow for blow we are equals. Through blood and sweat I prevail, this time. Show me what is hiding in your depths. Show me passion, pain, persecution, perseverance; show me anything!

A sharp spile through a soft heart and your secrets are mine. My cup is ready. I will drink and be restored once more. The knob turns, and turns, and turns. I wait, anticipate, and thirst. Ash! Nothing but ash fills this cup. You have been burned up, consumed, and nothing remains. Be gone from me.

I can’t do this. Why should I continue? Fate is the same for all and I will be forgotten. Words once spoken, once written, will be lost like a single rain drop is lost to the sea. I could stop; should stop. End the agony, end the suffering for it is done in vain. But…I am a masochist and so I write on.