writing the night

there is work

to be done

but I have not

the patience or

the focus for it

 

in my head

I retreat

to the days of

the music and the bic

and the spiral notebook

 

so many years

yellowed in candlelight

the words that gushed

and flowed to the old songs

with so much force

 

I could hardly capture them

now are choked

and stuttered

and micro-managed

 

I am that girl, but not

now a loose-skinned woman

decades beyond the words

and the heart and the need

 

but the heart still beats

the need remains

the words still come

more slowly

but not less urgently