I got nothing.

Perhaps it’s just the usual
Blank page panic
That terrorizes every writer.

And yet
This nothing feels different

Really.
I got nothing.
I am empty
Drained
Depleted.

Outrage has coursed through my veins
For so long
That I am eroded from the inside
A vast Grand Canyon of emptiness
That somehow feels oddly heavy.

This emptiness is filled
With stories that will go untold
Poetry that will never sing
Music that will never resonate in our hearts.

Somewhere deep down
At the bottom of the canyon
A small voice cries out
The tone is plaintive
But too soft to carry it out of the depths
To my ears
which long to hear
Something.

But I got nothing.

For so long now
I have watched
as truth as been hollowed out
as decency has been discarded
as cruelty has seeped in to fill the void.

Perhaps “nothing”
Is better than the images
That haunt my waking and my sleeping:
School children cowering in closets
Babies ripped from their mothers’ arms
Refugees huddled in squalid camps
Dead black boys
And Palestinians
And Puerto Ricans
Swastikas and burning crosses.

I got nothing.

Tomorrow
I will face the blank page again
I will listen very hard
To hear the voice from the depths of the canyon
Maybe the cries will reach me
And I will hear something
And it will give me hope.

But for today
I got nothing.

Debra Rose Brillati
June 2018