I filled three trashcans, granted the bathroom size, to the brim with crumpled college-ruled cursive, failed attempts at the marriage of language and vision, all the things in my mind I could not put to paper. I couldn’t find the million-dollar words I wanted.

I Google’d the “100 most beautiful words of the English language.”
Efflorescence. I would have liked to use that one. Or maybe petrichor.
Chatoyant.


I tried to give mass to chimeras.
They grew old easily, floating down a temporal lazy river.
Her tissue-paper dreams were torn by the hooks of hometown love.
My metaphors fell flat.

I tried to envision Parnassus, something like rolling hills dotted with vibrant flowers, plants with names I do not know lining the slopes. I am not familiar with Greek foliage. I imagined myself climbing, turning over rocks in search of inspiration.
I found only isopods.

Between 5/4 inch margins I constructed a paper balloon, my papyrus mausoleum. Here is my embalmed work. Blank. Blank. Blank.