I’m sick of starting stories and never finishing them. 

They seem to taunt me.

 

My Google Drive is full of half-started projects from 3 a.m.

Stories that were started as tears slowly trailed down my face,

But were discarded as the salty orbs took over my vision.

They eventually become forgotten about.

 

I must have 30 two-stanza poems begging to be finished,

The lines popping into my brain while I’m doing the dishes,

The lines being scribbled down into my notes app.

The lines that haven’t been looked at since.

 

Poems about how I have picked the skin around my fingernails until they’re raw.

About how the thoughts in my head physically hurt me when they collide.

Peace I can’t seem to achieve.

Hurt.

 

I started a poem about exams this week,

Until I couldn’t get the words right and I wept.

I wept till my head ached and I desperately wanted to lay down,

But instead I worked on an exam review I had put off for the same reasons.

 

I tried to write one about all the pieces of others I see in myself,

The traits I’ve received from those closest to me.

It now sits discarded.

I fell asleep trying to think of the traits I like about myself; 

My math homework wasn’t completed that night.

 

 

I tried to write a happy poem,

All of my stories seem to have over-arching sad themes,

But I ran out of synonyms for happy in the second stanza.

The words wouldn’t come to me.

 

I wrote one about an apartment complex.

I absolutely adored it,

Until I read it so many times that I despised it.

I still have the tab open.

 

I’m starting to think I’ve run out of words.

I’m so burnt out that I can no longer form beautiful sentences.

I’m buried under tasks to the point that I don’t even have time to finish a story.

I’m just tired.

 

And that scares me.