A Poem for Writer’s Block

Words like seeds, like flowers, like vines

Crawling up my soul and under my skin and around my heart

And reaching for the light.

And I

Can’t put pen to paper. Can’t offer them release. Can’t access the part of me that nurtured them from their growing home inside me into the stories they longed to become.

I

Didn’t mean to stop tending to my inner garden

I

Didn’t mean to keep saying I would make time for it later.

I forgot to build a trellis

And now.

A wild forest lives inside me, tangled.

Brambles and weeds and the stretching fingers of the vines that begged for light push.

Pull.

Choke.

And I stare at blank pages wondering

Did I lose my green thumb for good?