It’s been eleven days since I last showed up here, not because I had nothing to say, but because the words were too heavy to face. This piece is what it feels like to want to write and be terrified of what might come out. A prose poem about fear, creation, and the strange power our own voice holds over us.
I fear my writing.
I arrive at the blank page, ideas consuming every cell of my body, blood rushing through my veins at the thought of those words dancing — wild, untamed, across the page. I begin to type and instantly wish I could regurgitate them. Words I’ve summoned suddenly feel foreign. I erase them. Often, I never start again.
I force silence into my body to avoid confrontation with my own voice. The words frighten me — because though they’re mine, they’re not.
Who are you?
The one with everything figured out,
mental fortitude steel-like,
broken, but unbreakable.
I read back what I’ve created with butterflies swimming through my rib cage, stealing each breath I try to inhale — while red ants corrupt my equilibrium, dragging me into self-deprecation. The rhythm falters. My chest tightens. I want to run.
Sometimes the words are grotesque, but therapeutic.
Sometimes they redirect my senses —
as if my alter ego took control of my fingers
and typed exactly what I didn’t want to say.
I sit, stuck between a million words,
orbiting a single person,
upholding the world —
insatiable from the lens.
Afterward, the reminder disassembles me from the inside out.
It’s like reality points its finger at me,
ready to obliterate the made-up I have created.
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