She tap, tap, tapped her cheap pen
on the yellowing paper.
The damned paper stared back
a blank, unflinching glare.
Typical.
Frenetically, restlessly,
she set her own metronome faster
with the clicking of her pen
than the outdated clock sulking in the corner
could possibly keep up with.
Suddenly, decisively,
She pushed herself away from the desk.
The screech of the chair’s harsh legs
across a cold, unforgiving concrete floor
filled up the whole room with noise.
Noise was all around her,
empty noise,
invading her ears
her head
her brain.
Stop!
She needed them out.
The room was silent—
Save for her
and the sounds
of an old room
with a dying light
and a faded, ticking clock.
She closed her tired eyes and
drew deeply from the cigarette between her
thin, voiceless lips,
then smudged her little addiction out
leaving a burn stain at the top of her paper.
Might as well,
she figures,
not much good comin’ from this paper
anyways.
And anyways,
the flickering light
in this God-forsaken old office
wasn’t doing her any good, either.
She knew it was time to pack up,
head home,
but she needed this demon inside her
to work for her,
not against her.
‘Writers Anonymous’
that’s where she needed to be—
what she needed
to be a part of.
She had things to say.
And she couldn’t say them.
Flick, flick, bzzz.
The light sputtered,
limping dejectedly through it’s own current,
with a halfhearted commitment to shedding light.
Hanging over her head
just like the ideas
she couldn’t force her hand
to capture on paper.
They needed to be confined, here,
she knew.
These thoughts, buzzing around her head,
like the anxious flicking
and bzzing of the bulb dangling precariously above,
needed to be trapped in this paper,
immortalized externally,
a burden laid down
in incriminating ink before her.
That’s what she needed, she knew.
but no matter how often
or how hard
or how intense
she tap, tap, tapped her pen
on the rickety wooden desk
over the silent white paper
with the cigarette stain in the top corner—
those damn buzzing thoughts
cluttering up her brain
would keep sputtering through life.
Writers Anonymous.
That’s what she needed.