A working title. This one just kind of happened to me.
Tonight, I discovered that my fear of blank pages is not learned, but innate —
a preexisting condition with a multitude of vicious comorbid disorders.
Sometimes, when I pore over the pages,
(press my fingers to the text
press my lips together
press my fist against my chest)
the empty spaces between the lines expand,
a horde of horizontal, hungry mouths,
and I am engulfed —
and when at last I break surface,
shaking hands windmilling wildly for succor,
I cling to the now familiar handholds:
two “x”s,
ironclad and indelible —
a. Illegitimate [x]
b. Abandoned by Mother [x]
Sometimes, when I read about 84C-3093,
I forget I am reading about myself —
and I am able, suddenly, to feel compassion for her:
small girl,
clinging to two x-shaped certainties,
at constant risk of drowning in that blank, uncharted sea —
and then I remember that we must be grateful
that we could have been snuffed out
that my feelings are as illegitimate as my birth
that being alive to feel this lost is a privilege
and I thrust from myself any borrowed empathy.
The Unapologetic INKDOG 