A girl sits at a battered desk,

tangled hair tumbling loose from her braid, 

green eyes squinting in concentration

at the blank notebook in front of her. 

She wields her pen like a slender sword,

stabbing fiercely at the enemy armies 

of the empty page

until the paper battlefield 

is smeared with inky blood.

Then, a mistake.

A careless scribble, a poorly chosen word. 

She rips the page out and hurls it aside,

the shreds drifting down, down, down

like tattered butterflies,

where they join heaps of crumpled paper,

the wreckage of other failed attempts

strewn and scattered across the carpet

like a quiet snowfall of despair.

The girl sighs,

turns to a clean page,

and begins again,

trying to find the right words. 

She doesn't know that sometimes, 

a story has to die over and over again

before it can live. 

She doesn't know that sometimes,

there are no right words.