Three days left
until the deadline
for the short story.
The prompt is
“I don\'t believe you.”
And the voice in my head says,
Fuck it.
I\'ve already done seven.
That\'s enough.
I didn\'t swear on an oath
that I\'d complete
twelve stories in twelve months.
That was the goal.
But I\'m a poet.
This anxiety
is fucking with me.
I should at least try.
Trying means
stretching my mind.
It means going to work.
Sitting at the keyboard
and developing a plot.
Finding a protagonist.
Finding a reason
for any of these people
to exist.
While another voice says,
Why don\'t you have
some leftover spaghetti
with a little olive oil
and Parmesan?
Short fiction isn\'t your genre.
It\'s not a big deal.
Nobody cares.
And maybe that\'s true.
But I hate quitting.
I\'ve quit so many things.
So many times.
Walked away
when the road got steep.
Found a reason
to call surrender
something else.
Three days.
Twelve stories.
Seven already behind me.
And somewhere inside
all this anxiety
is a stubborn little voice
that refuses to let me
walk away from eight.
Because maybe
the point isn\'t
whether I\'m a short story writer.
Maybe the point
is stretching the mind
until it hurts.
Sitting down
when I\'d rather eat spaghetti.
Hitting the keys
when nothing comes.
Making something
out of nothing.
Failing badly
and trying again.
So fuck it.
Time to go to work.
Maybe at the end
of these twelve months
I\'ll be able to say,
I wrote twelve stories
in twelve months.
And nobody
will have given a damn.
Except me.