Friday, December 30, 2022

Down to the Wire for 2022

 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.







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