2022 was a year of
barely. Writing. Anything. At. All.
Odd for me.
The lack of pen to paper
(or more often, fingers to keyboard)
wasn't due to a lack of imagination.
My tales never stopped flowing.
Blips of news, half-petaled flowers,
odd human glances from squirrels outside my window
continued to inspire me to open up a Word doc
and type in sentences,
a paragraph,
a page.
But this was all.
Fragments.
Maybe I was too busy
with jobs
that fed me a steady stream of
beautiful words to read,
beautiful books to share.
Maybe I was devouring more stories than I could create.
Maybe it was simmering pandemic mania
that continued, continues, to pit us against each other.
Maybe it was bone-crushing shudders
that stopped me cold
every time an angry person with a gun
exercised their misinterpreted rights
to siphon unhappiness
into random killing.
Maybe it was the smashing down,
hammering down,
of anyone
everyone
who wasn't
a straight rich white guy
a straight political white guy
a straight powerful white guy
an straight old white guy
a straight young white guy
a straight stupid white guy
an straight ignorant white guy
any straight white guy.
Like possession of
estrogen
glowed from foreheads
in red skull and crossbones
warnings.
Like possession of
melanin
was a poisonous elixir
demanding to be poured out
onto bloody ground.
Like loving who
we were meant to love
was its own plague.
Like being who
we were meant to be
was a raw, seething, curse.
Maybe I simply didn't have
enough words
the right words
to make sense of it all.
But a new year is peeking at me over the horizon,
tempting me once again to
throw my words into the void.
Maybe I will.
