When you forget how to do the things you know you love doing
It can feel like the ability that used to come so naturally
Has already soaked into the misshapen stain of nothingness you blame yourself for spilling

It’s contents have already slipped between the floorboards
And escaped from the cracks in your skin before you got a chance to check when they’d be coming back

I haven’t been writing recently
I haven’t been able to
I don’t know why

I don’t know why my right hand can’t find the will to cradle a pen the way it did before
Like my fingers have forgotten their favourite position to make love to lined paper in

A broken down marriage forcing itself to carry on collapsing
Wheels wasting away spoke by spoke with every rotation
Until there is nothing left to support it’s tired turning
Until it falls on it’s side
Disintegrates
And becomes one with the earth it used to roam so proudly

Maybe it’s just rusty
Growing weaker with age
Desperate for an oiling of inspiration
Provoked by the detonation of something bigger than it’s brittle body
Something so furious
so deafening
that the dots that hang on the insides of closed eyes never stop flashing
Even when the world violates fortresses of eyelashes
and pupils learn to dilate on demand

Maybe I’m missing something
Something already there
As plain as the nose on my face
Just north of cupids bow and south of sights for sore eyes

And yet
It still refuses to tell me where
or how to trace the invisibility of a saving grace that mockery comes second nature to

Maybe it’s not meant for me
But then please explain the fragility of such a thing
That threaded itself so delicately into the stitching of my naive and barren soul the first time I made my mouth move
to speak words it only ever spoke in silence

Explain the burning in my belly
Whose smoke rises into my chest with every late night
stage fright
bedroom performance delivered to absent guests whose applause is collected
Kept secret beneath my pillows
Only to emerge in the shapes of dreams
Evaporating with every 6am sunrise that shines through my window

I’ve never been a morning person
Tiredness has turned into a trait rather than a side effect

I find myself falling asleep on buses in the hope that when I wake up I will be somewhere I don’t recognise but always intended to visit
A place littered with billboards advertising what my purpose in life was always meant to be
And a phone number beneath where first come first served gets it for free

Early bird gets the worm
And now my wings only work in the dark
Ever since contracting the corrosive infection that spread all the way to the edges of the veins until it began to bleed but never had the courage to finish the job

Guilt has set so many seeds in my stomach
That a dynasty of doubts has grown it’s own garden
and is using my bones as a trellis
Contradictions can’t capture the cause of a catastrophe
But give the clouds enough time to settle and the dust might tell you why

It’s not that nothing was meant for me
I just don’t think I’m destined for anything
bigger than my body

The one I inhabit daily
On a part-time
rent-free basis

Where autopilot is automatic

We're still waiting for someone else to fix the off switch