i can't write anymore
and i know it's because
i am afraid of my own
truths

it's hard to find the
exact point where i
began slipping, because
usually it's with a whiskey
bottle in hand, but this
time sobriety haunts me

i become uncomfortable
at this point in a poem -
unsure of my intentions,
of who i am as a writer,
of my own ******* self

and so begins the anger,
the masking, the quitting,
the loneliness, the bubbling
of things that were once
dead and buried

and then i sit, and i don't
write in my head, and i
question it all with the
same intensity that has
lingered for nearly
two months, and i want
to take paper with my
words and shove it
back down my throat,
because this
is not
poetry