Locked Out

I reach for the door I know by heart,
the one that used to open with a breath,
now it flickers, stutters, falls apart,
a threshold guarding nothing, offering less.

Network error. Host unknown.
Small words for a large kind of loss,
not the silence I chose, but one I'm thrown,
a door slammed shut before I can cross.

I am not overwhelmed by nothing.
I am overwhelmed by absence,
the part of me that needs the telling,
cut clean, without permission, without sense.

Three hours open. One upload got through.
Proof I'm here, still trying, still true.

Author's Note

I wrote this after days of being unable to reliably access Vocal Media. The app has repeatedly crashed, shown network errors, failed to connect, or logged me out before I could read or post anything. This poem isn't about writer's block. It's about being locked out by the very platform meant to hold your words.

For the past few days, I've tried everything I could to work around the problem, but I still haven't been able to use my account consistently. From what I've seen, other writers across the community have also been affected by different issues since the update. This piece comes directly from my own experience with those frustrating days: having words ready to share while the door to sharing them refuses to stay open.