Writer's Block or Mockingbird Syndrom

Feeling a bit out of sorts lately. It feels like there's tiny clumps of cells gathering at various places inside my body...they vibrate when I try to walk one distance to another. The sun came out today. I woke and felt the slightest warmth across my shoulder. I thought I was still in the dream I was dreaming, where I collected something in my hands and handed them to You. But You wouldn't take them, only whispered in my ear "patience." And all was through. I awoke to sunlight. And all day, I try and remember my only becoming is this day. My only emergence is right now. If I wake tomorrow, I start over again with a brand new gift. And Monday, I threw the gift into the gutter. I stomped the ice and snow, crunching the brittle ground in anger and frustration. You just sighed and carried me over the puddles, though I never notice your devotion. I hoarded the pain because it was mine. Sometimes I feel so small that all I dress myself in is pain. And so the gift slipped from my hands. I felt myself chewing my own tongue, grinding teeth and holding the wall together with arms. I run. I run on the treadmill and I run from Grace. Forget that I am my own warmth, my own light, which continues to grow though I forget to tend to it.

And so the poetry is silent as well. My impatience catches me. Its barbs stick into my sweater. I hold back. I hold on. Hold on. I just want to see if I am strong. But I know You. You'd say I had nothing to prove. So why does it hurt to admit that I am scared? That pride has me running in all directions, gathering things, picking out words and images? A mockingbird desperately building a nest, a poem, something to love, for love, to stake a claim on the day?





I tried to write a short poem

slip knots inside
Conch shells, pink-
ness floating about
the head. You said
I needed to trust
less, wrap words
around ankles, swim,
drown them, wait;
see what emerges,
what light breaks
through the surface—

Gold, breath, bundles,
teacup,
your hair.