how long since you wrote your last poem?

3 months

why haven’t you been writing?

haven’t had it in me, doc,
just couldn’t get anything down

I thought I told you to write,
even if you thought you couldn’t?

guess I forgot
or figured you were
full of ****

what about the poems you’ve been bringing?
you’ve had poems every week

stolen

from whom?

kids on the internet usually
stole one off my friend
real talent that one is
going to be famous one day

why can’t you be famous?

because I’m not any good

who says that?

I say that

well stop.

no.

there is a silence

I think you’re lying

about what?

not writing,
these poems are too good,
too much like yours,
too similar to how you’ve
been feeling

well a desperate man
will do a lot to hide something,
won’t he, doc?

why would you be desperate?

I don’t know,
I really don’t.

*he looks away,
downward at the floor
then out the window,
he notices a bird on a branch
it flutters its wings once and
flies away out of his view

he thinks about the poems he’s written
how more effective a set of wings would be
to let him escape everything that is himself