I don’t have writer’s block.
Because that’s when you can’t write.
Where your mind is a crevasse, a pit, a canyon–
Deep and vast and empty.
Vultures flying overhead,
scouring for bits of creative roadkill
left among the dust and heat.
Circling, swooping, diving
On a mindless, endless loop
Of absolutely nothing to say.
I don’t have writer’s block.
Because my mind is not a canyon.
But a chalkboard in a first-grade classroom
Filled corner to corner, top to bottom
with only two letters.
Or a typewriter with just two keys–
Two options, two choices.
I hunt and peck just like the vultures,
but there are only two letters for me to find.
Of the 21 consonants and 5 vowels in the English language–
the language I learned to speak by mimicking my mother as an infant,
the language I learned to write poetry in by copying my mother as a young girl–
Of all the letters she taught me,
Only two are within my reach.
Two alphabet neighbors,
Making one precious word:
M-O-M.
I’m an artist with only two colors.
I’m a musician with only two notes.
I’m a daughter with only one parent.
Because M-O-M is gone.
No, I don’t have writer’s block.
Because I cannot block out grief.
And I cannot block out angst.
Or flashbacks.
Or nightmares.
Or the swelling of my stomach when I miss her more
than having 24 more letters to work with–
Than having something else to say.
I don’t have writer’s block.
Because I can write.
I can write anger.
I can write devastation.
I can write longing.
I can write memory.
I can write her.
I just can’t seem to write anything else.
I don’t have writer’s block.
But there are some days
I wish that I did.