A Loss of Words

by Hannah Arbeitel

The sensation can be compared to a prickle on the skin,
A sinister raise of a hair,
A foreboding blank page.
The emptiness stares back and swallows,
Gulping at the sight of an uninspired mind.
If i am at a loss to express words and emotions,
It is because I am incapable or I choose to be incapable?
The very language that I call home,
The language that I crawl into to lick my wounds of incessant strife,
Feels so foreign on nights like these.
A night where the moon is scornfully covered by selfish mist,
Yet still illuminated by the effervescent light of a far off star.
I feel akin to the star that seems millions of thoughts away,
For I am the same;
Able to see and almost uncover my own devices,
But unable to bring them through the shadows in which they are shrouded.
It is not a block of wit as many craftsmen seem to conquer,
Rather an absence of a sense of what should be said.
It has been a continuous semblance of a presence,
Each sunrise waking to find only nothing when something was there not long ago.
It has evolved into the feeling longing and grieving over something I've lost.
Something dear and most precious,
Something that feels as though once gone it can only return reshaped and molded.
The voice of a writer,
A writer that has been lost to time, to idea, to words off lips.
A writer who is not quite a writer at all.