I haven’t written to myself in god knows
how long so naturally it used to come;
that word now permanently stuck, hopelessly
affixed to the tip of my tongue-
a stranger to myself, my own thoughts, the words that won’t arrive.

I cannot understand.

Why? And to where? And when did I leave?
Simultaneously
I used to feel everything
but
I’d write myself again if only to come
to convince me that I
used to be alive.

My mother told me once that you are
what you write and what you read, but I haven’t yet found a book or a poem sufficiently large or deep or empty enough
to elicit, record, confess
all that I must purge.

Countless pages still untouched.
I still can’t find the words.

-Jesse Haydn