The poet sighed,
took out paper and pen
and waited for inspiration to come.
Nothing.
He stared at the blank page
for hour after hour,
like every day
for the last month,
nothing came to him.
“There is no poetry in my anymore.”
he mumbled weakly,
as if there were not strength in him,
but he hurled the pen across the room
hard enough to gouge the wall.
He got up, went about his day,
he had a lot of things to do,
later, he took up the paper and pen again.
“There is no more poetry in the world.”
he wrote, the words scrawled
untidily across the page,
“No more words
of love or passion,
no more pretty phrases.”
He went on at length,
describing his lack of feelings,
his inability to express his pain.
After a couple of pages he paused,
with a steeling breath
he went on.
“I’ve found a way out
of the pit I’m trapped in,
this empty, emotionless void.”
“I cannot make it out myself,
I will need a ladder.”
“A ladder is a wonderful device,
able to help mankind
rise above troubles,
to lift them up
when their own abilities
fail.”
He put his pen down,
walked out to his garage,
in there, he looked upon the ladder
he had placed under his way out,
a noose.
He stood there for a moment,
thinking about his lack of feeling,
his failures,
the people that betrayed him.
He looked down at the pages in his hand,
placed them carefully on the workbench,
the would be found there,
read and examined.
Thereafter people would understand
why he took this route,
why he could no longer cope
with his inability to write.
He climbed the ladder,
put his head in the noose,
his portal out of the pit.
He stopped for a moment,
looked down at the pages,
then it hit him.
These pages he had written
were his finest writing in months,
perhaps in his life.
Thinking about what he wrote
he realized,
there was the emotion he hadn’t felt,
the words that wouldn’t come.
Startled by the revelation
he stepped back,
off the ladder,
his mind ablaze with ideas.
But the noose, that was his way out of pain,
was still around his neck.
As he hung there,
helpless,
slowly fading away,
he cursed himself.
Why hadn’t he paused
at the base of the ladder,
reread the pages he carried.
Now, it was too late,
everything he still had within him
would die with him.
People would read his words
and never know,
that he had found his voice again,
had come to understand
that numbness and pain
don’t last.
They would read his words
and think less of him.
As these thoughts faded
and darkness claimed him
a single tear crept down his cheek.
A final testament
that he had,
in the end,
regained his humanity.
But sadly,
it would dry and disappear,
long before he was found.