i think i’m starting to hate writing. i think i’m starting to regret the nights i stayed up trying to find the right word for the right sentence. i think i’m starting to grieve over the trees i killed so i could spit out poems and then throw them away. what good has it done besides leave me with endless lines of dissatisfaction and baggy eyes? what good has it done besides isolate me and force me to spend my waking hours in solitary confinement within my own sphere of words? and all it's given back to me is a crowd of imaginary friends i only know how to speak to through ink. i think i’m starting to loathe these so-called “friends.” they were only inky caricatures i wished into existence. when i poured my heart out, sobbed into their pages, because writing is “therapy,” all they did was stare back and let me inhale more ink and exhale more words. but they didn't warn me when i inhaled too much and let the ink overflow my lungs, clog up my throat, bleed everything over in black. they didn't warn me when the ink started killing me inside out. i think i’m starting to hate writing for i have become a corpse, slumped over my desk —decaying, as unfinished sentences leak out of my mouth and bleed past my ears, cascade like tears down my cheeks but i, i am only trying to read the missing words.