when the well runs dry

sometimes I think I’ve forgotten how to write, how to spin my pen between my fingers, how to open a book, how to mark a page with a fold in the corner when I must go, somewhere between this pain and the last, somehow between these tears and the past; I feel I’ve lost a part of my wounding, welded soul as I sit and smile and wave while my heart sits heavily upon this nameless, faceless dream I still heave upon my back like a boulder; I’ve carried it across the winding city streets of my life for years and days and hours like Jesus with the Cross, like a spiritual movement, a moral obsession, an intellectual compulsion, like a fierce and silent promise, through the halls of my homes and my schools and all the pretty places I will never step into again, through the hot and toiling dessert whipping with winds, sand in my eyes, burning the soles of my feet with the Sun’s vicious wrath—but I have forgotten how to write; I have lost track now of the sacrifices made, the time spent, my bed laid, my page bent, my stories read but never shared, desperate but not quite prepared; I am never to return again to the passions of my youth except in quick and fleeting moments of exultance and anticipation, in which a rush like that of a rabid fiend comes over my being as I take the pen into my hand, into my body, into my mind, and let the words craft themselves before me, materializing like nothing short of magic in crooked cursive; now it is harder than ever to get there, to live in the mind, for when one gets stuck there, they will never want to get out, I have found, and yet a new question arises in the forefront of my realism rooted mind: how does one get back in? how do I reenter myself into the love I can no longer feel most days, distracted, saddened, anxious, or exhausted with nothing to show for it; I call for help but I feel like I’m drowning and no one truly wants to listen, having heard it all before; how do I live when my love is unreachable, when my scraps fill every trash bag, every can, every orifice of memory and mind, when the Sun in the sky remains so far away? I can grasp at it all day and all night, but the shame gets too much and I feel the people watching me flounder, so I stop; I am maddened by my own futile creations that die before they are born, and I have no Creature to show for them, no regrets in a false cruel Fatherhood, no swaddled baby of an art piece to cradle in my arms and mother, only small pieces of torn up papers and mistakes, only final words before the sentence is finished, only crossed out phrases and scribbled out places, all hopelessly, lovingly derivative, all unintentionally uninteresting, all never grand enough; how do I write when the pain won’t leave? writing after changing is hard, almost as hard as the change itself; it is an endless cycle of remembering who you have been and who you may return to, and the futility of all is called into question, even now, even still; if all I can control is myself, and what I can make of this life, then what choice do I have but to keep penning, even when I am writing myself, perhaps, into my own metaphorical grave; change will come, not only in fiction but in life, not only in good times but in strife, not only in mourning but in light, and in softness, and in worlds of newness and wonder, in moments of anger and blunder, in imperfections galore, in the middle of the score—change will come, and I will be the same me with the same dreams, the same schemes, the same ambition, however hidden, the same shame, however unbidden, and the same passion, however buried, and always written