hate

I don't feel like writing.
Writing makes me frustrated.
It makes me mad.
I sit down every time and stare at my computer screen for hours waiting for a moment of brilliant inspiration so that I can start typing away, pounding out some effortless, inspirational work of ingenious craftsmanship.
And I dream on.

I don't feel like writing.
Because it used to be fun.
Because things used to flow out of my mind and onto the page pretty smoothly.
Writing used to be a catharsis but now it is a frustration.
Why am I not better at this?
Why is Word underlining all of my sentences in little green, squiggly lines
as if it knows better than me what I want to say?
I hate this.

When I first started writing back in the day,
You know, like six months ago...
I just wrote.
A few hours later, I had a piece and felt pretty accomplished about it.
So my friends would read it and tell me how fantastic I am
and I would beam and start squandering up more fantastic things to write about.

Not anymore.
I just punch the keys like I'm punching one of those gigantic, bright red
punching bags hanging in a sweltering hot garage.
And the other people in the library calmly writing their perfect, little literary analysis papers glance my direction wondering what's my problem.
And I ignore their presence and jam my fingers harder into the keys.

I used to be good at writing until I discovered that other people are good at writing too.
Because they're better.
Because they write things that I would never even dream of, like amazing, stupid, fantastic poetry and other stuff like that that I love.
I mean hate.
And they read them with passion and fervor and conviction and I just sit there attentively in my hard, brown chair and
sink sink sink sink sink.

And then I turn in my own work to some million times published Ph.D. professor that I love and loathe all at the same time.
Because she should be inspirational but not at the time.
Not when she's marking up my heart and soul on paper with her dulling, yellow pencil.
Like it's politically correct or something not to use red ink.
Like all I hold inside my chest will be crushed slower or softer or something in erasable
gray.

So then I write junk like this.
And I abhor it.
What am I even doing?
When am I going to love this again?
Because with each hateful word that I type, It is wretched


to

detest


something


that I know






somewhere








in my heart,



I still
love.