words

Poem in Invisible Ink

Video ~ ~ Georgia Tell ~ Leave a comment

The words are aching to explode from my chest. Instead, they leak in invisible ink. I want to read them, but I can’t see them, even with glasses.

I write this while I sit on a full-sized bed in a small room with nearly thirty other beings. The only way I survive is focus, focus on other things. I am a master of focus. Focus. Focus. Focus.

But that focus can create this never-ending loop in my brain. An anxiety loop worsening until my bones are about to shatter from the shaking. More power than a jack hammer. More oscillation than a “back massager.” More danger than an earthquake.

I’M LIABLE TO EXPLODE!

… except quietly. Softly. No one will notice that my heart seized up in the frenzy. No one will notice as I fall to the ground.

I am as invisible as the words I cannot put to paper. I am a writer who cannot write. I am a poet who barely uses adverbs.

Even this is short, though I can feel the rhythm of those superfluous words in my chest. They waltz. They are beautiful, I am aware. But I can’t see them.

Poem #611

~ Georgia Tell ~ 1 Comment

she wrote everything in cursive
on every piece of paper she got
in the dust of the window of her mom’s SUV
on the shower door during her bath time
because she learned how to in school
“third graders learn cursive!” she’d exclaimed
she wrote with curvy lines and dots
her favorite pen was a sparkly blue gel pen
but she’d write with anything
she kept glittery notebooks of her thoughts
and any sign she read
Verdugo, Victory, Magnolia, Alameda
then she got a laptop in sixth grade
and she stopped writing in cursive
but she still wrote everything
tapping away at her keys
coloring the fonts with her favorite blue
she loved Cambria
she typed science words and historical names
Jefferson, Edison, Roosevelt, Washington
it wasn’t the cursive she had loved
it was the words