everything and nothing

 

She sat in the small mom and pop gas station. One of only four, in the hole in the road, backwoods town she had lived in since she entered the fifth grade. Of the four, this was the only one open this time of night. She imagined this would be the closest she would ever come to a posh coffee shop. This was her haven, as unpolished as it may be. This is where she would find the words to express everything she had been suppressing.

 

 

Phasing the passing customers out as they went about there business, purchasing mostly gasoline and variety of soft drinks. The beeping of the cash register and mechanical clicking of the printer faded softly into the back of her mind. She focused wholly on the pen and paper. Something she couldn’t quite describe had been welling up inside of her for some time now. She knew if she could find the keywords to unlocking it, her soul would gracefully flood on to the paper in a perfect balance of poetic symbolism and deeper meaning, that would be fine-tuned at a later date. But still, the simple act of the words drifting out of her head, through the flow of the ballpoint pen and out onto paper, would release her from the pent-up anxiety that had held her captive and threatened to smother her, these last past couple of weeks.

 

She put pen to paper, poised and waiting.

 

Nothing came. Never a good sign. So she did the only thing she knew. She forced it. Hopefully, it would begin forced and blossom into something natural:

 

 

 

‘I want to write everything and nothing. Everything I want to express wrapped in sugary adjectives, pronounced in proper Adverbs…’

 

No good. No sweet release. No engaging poetry. Still phrases and fragments, that she couldn’t quite piece together floated through her mind. She sighed in frustration.

 

“Damn it!”