Writer’s Block

The white page stares like unblinking eyes.

I reach for my pencil, but it won’t write.

Trying to wake my brain, but it just stays sleeping.

Why won’t the words come flowing?

Ten minutes later, the page is still staring.

Blank and empty, no mark made.

The flawless white surface perfect and crisp.

Maybe that’s why my pen is held still

Afraid to mess up this page with meaningless sentences

Afraid to blemish it with a spot of ink

Afraid to see what my heart thinks

Afraid to venture into the unknown

Where critics roam.

Scared that if I miss a mark,

A word, a phrase,

That if I choose the wrong word

They’ll hunt me down and tear my ink filled page apart

Tear it apart with remarks

Re-make it to where it’s not mine

But a work of someone who is scared to own

Own what she did, what he made

Own to the mistake and the lessoned learned

Own to the unfinished masterpiece still in their hands

Afraid to open up and reveal their opinions and lives.

The page still stands without a crinkle or a spot

Still waiting for you to decide whether or not

You will step out with courage

You will choose to crinkle and blot

You will choose to shrug and turn your head

To the ugly remarks that still your pen

You think Shakespeare got it on the first try?

Go back in history and see how many people say

“It just hit me”

Without a million rewrites

It stands here, waiting on you, to fill

The page with you, not someone else

The critics may ramp and rage

But you keep writing all your days

So that one day you can stop and see

That you did finish your masterpiece

And the rewrites made it better

The critics made it sharper

The laboring was worth it

When you see you finally filled the page

You picked up your pen courageously

Step into the unknown, my friend

You’ll find that your own mind is the threat

Your own thinking stalls your pen.

Keeps your words from flowing on the page

From inspiring someone to keep fighting

From encouraging someone that they can go another day

They stay for a lifetime, on that crinkled page

Full of imperfections but also so flawless

Because you can own it

You can say

I wrote that

That is all worth it.