A Cathartic Drought

Without it, rain loses its value

Write-lands in drought. No word-rain for two years. An idea now and then, but it always disappears.

At first he was calm, but as months went by stress hugged tightly his mind; clarity said goodbye.

Lights on the break-up. If she hadn’t left me… She was his muse for a long time; an inspiration’s key.

The way she moved in the shower could give birth to poems and lyrics. The foundations of my creativity are just a pile of scattered bricks.

Daytime, working and gardening. Night-time, swimming in alcohol. Burying himself every day in an ever deepening hole.

“In a way, she can still be your muse” said a friend of his on the phone. “Why don’t you write about that? Poems about being alone”.

“It doesn’t work like that for me. My muse was always visible. I write because of what I see. I need a prompt that’s tangible”.

“Are you sure about that?”, his shadow asked during a walk. “What’s between the visible element and your every poem’s first talk”?

He was thinking about that within that night’s calmer heartbeat. “My feelings” was the answer, but it seemed somehow incomplete.

The next evening something happened. He noticed the dance of a thin tree. A gentle breeze made it move; the sound was a magic melody.

The garden was suddenly in a vortex of mystery for seconds. His attention was fully focused on that present moment’s chords.

So, right before he formed in mind the first stanza’s meaning, he sensed a caressing in his nostrils as if he welcomed a spirit’s exhaling.

He moved slowly into the house, careful not to lose the moment, and wrote a therapeutic poem that put an end to his torment.

Something external+my feelings along with in-spiration. The point of view was widened revealing the whole combination.

Anthi Psomiadou — CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International : Credit must be given to the creator/ Only noncommercial uses of the work are permitted/ No derivatives