You saw the trailer but not the movie: a prose poem

I wrote this poem over a year ago now—one evening after logging off from work, back when I was still working from home. It was supposed to be a blog post but very quickly it started to become something else. I don’t think I realized it was a poem, though, until I was almost halfway through writing it. Form is funny that way.

I meant to publish this months ago when I had finally decided to post the poem to my Instagram account. And then I thought about just posting this here and walking away without any commentary, because I didn’t want to be self-important. But I did want to write about one thing I’ve experienced since writing this poem that has irked me beyond words. Literally. And that’s the fact that I will write something like this—something that feels so wry and honest and visceral—but then fail to write anything else like it for over a year. It’s as though I only get tapped into my creativity every other blue moon, maybe less. However often blue moons happen, or don’t.

I don’t even consider myself to be a poet by nature. It happens sporadically and with a strong sense of creative possession I don’t normally experience, like some wily spirit bewitches my body for however long it takes to compose. I think part of the problem is that I don’t give myself a consistent creative outlet for writing. Not where I feel safe enough to be bare and raw. So when I do experience these spurts of creative effort it is most likely in response to a buildup of emotional waste I haven’t dealt with in the way that I would like—words. I used to keep journals regularly. I have a stack of them in a box somewhere in my room. There’s at least one hanging around on my bookshelf still waiting for me to finish that last mournful page. But who even knows when I’ll finish it now that I’m working in an office again.

I can feel myself turning inward, like I’m rolling into a warm, familiar blanket. Only how long before I become cramped and restless again? I don’t know. I just wish I didn’t have to do dramatic things like take a job back in the office full-time in an attempt to prove something to myself. But I knew I couldn’t stay. I was going to leave my old job eventually, I knew that. It was just a matter of when. And anyway, I’m not sure how much it matters. All jobs cease to exist in the face of a creative spirit, who is too demanding to be ignored and insists on having its way. What is a job, in the end, but something that keeps humans afloat so they can wrangle with the wind?