​My Creativity (or Lack Thereof)

Every now and then a pencil finds its way to me. I don’t say that it was I who’d taken ahold of it; that would be a lie. When it places itself in my short fingers, I succumb to its influence. It transports me – generously, to be sure – to a bottomless sea of words I can’t even tread water in.

The tide is never calm. It refuses to settle and allow me to dive beneath the surface; should I decide to drown at the hands of its whirlpool, I fear I’ll never see the sunlight – break free from the pencil – again.

Today the pencil guides me.

I am paddling (or better yet thrashing) through a sea of indecipherable words amaranthine. They’re like saltwater fish nibbling at my feet, beckoning to me, summoning me. It’s just as monstrous as it is persuasive, in a way. I imagine myself taking these words into my arms and bringing them home with me. I could take them all, use them all, shape and master them all until they’ve done my bidding.

If only there weren’t so many of them.

My creativity is a delicate flower, fickle and temperamental. It blossoms solely by its own volition, never to the accord of others, never to the accord of the situation. In that sense, I suppose, my creativity is spiteful. It requires nurturing and nourishment it doesn’t even desire, only to bloom at the wrong times and shed its petals at the right ones. It’s defiant and high-maintenance, expecting me to bend over backwards out of accommodation to it.

It wilts at the stem this very moment.

This flower – particular, volatile – demands the occasional watering to sustain itself; never too much, never too little, and never just right. It quite relishes the evaporation of seawater, but cannot be plunged head-first into an ocean without drastic consequence. Water it too little, the flower demands more. Water it too much, the flower perishes, shutting itself down until its leisurely rebirth seasons later. Water it just right, so to speak, the flower decides to find another reason why it shouldn’t grow anyway. It sinisterly blames the environment, climate or conditions, leading to its ordained death.

My creativity flourishes when I connect with a pencil, before it promptly withers the moment it’s introduced to the mere sight of the Neptune that calls itself the briny blue deep.

There’s no use collecting seawater for a flower that doesn’t want nutrients. The next time the pencil finds me – and it will, without a doubt – I wonder if I’ll pretend I did not see it.

I wonder why my creativity is always beside me and never present.

All the same, I would not have plucked these words from the sea I fish from without that pencil and without this flower I use as tempting bait. I owe a thank you to my creativity, or lack thereof.