Written for the days when I'm in a slump.
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She stared.
Everything seemed so close and so far away at the same time. She needed to zoom out and focus inside at the same time. Everything contradicted itself.
On these days, her mind felt like a bowl of mud. Thick, brown, pasty slop mashed into a skull. Soft, squishy eyes glued to their sockets. And three constantly aching points on her forehead and temples.
The bright light emanating from her screen seemed to mock her. Mixing in with the mud, and somehow making it even more viscous. She tried to close her eyes. She really did. But she couldn't bear to tear, to rip herself away from her work.
It was passable, but that was all it was. She could always add more. Always improve it. Always make it better.
Coffee cans littered the floor, and so did takeout boxes. Random crumpled scraps of paper were strewn everywhere. At first, she had taken the time to write down her ideas. Her visions. To draw them, to illustrate them, and to bring them to reality one by one. But every time she felt like she had grasped the slippery dream wriggling around her mind - just on the edge, really - it flew away in all the glory of its bold, vibrant colors.
The things she had written down were words and pictures. However, that was all they were. Yet again she couldn't seem to infuse them with the same feeling nor the same dreams as before. She refused to look away, because she knew she could do it.
If she did it before, why couldn't she do it again? If she'd already worked an extra hour, why not an extra day?
In the beginning, she'd occasionally been interrupted by the buzzing of her phone. Her friend - the word felt just as thick as all the others - had repeatedly reminded her she didn't have to and shouldn't become such a shut in in order to achieve what she wished. Day by day she slipped further into catching the colorful wisps frolicking in her mind as reality became more faded.