mind itch - no cause, no relief

Ambiguity is the ibuprofen of the writing world, a temporary cure-all for any chronic irritation. Used liberally and in increasingly higher doses, sold over the counter in broken hearted love songs from one hit wonder 80s artists, found stashed in your fathers medicine cabinet, a few hidden in the beginnings of many a leather bound journal. They don’t have a support group for this kind of addiction, really, nothing substantial would get said. Instead we’d all just pass around the bottle hoping the rattling noise of pills against plastic might drown out our over-stimulated minds. “Write”, something says in the familiar raspy voice of your conscience, wiser than its years, softened by cigarettes and whiskey. Yeah, that worked yesterday and maybe last week, but tonight trapped in the haze of a passing electrical storm everything is jittery, one word misplaced and the friction will set these fucking walls aflame. So you sit, staring at a blank word document until that 80s song comes on, pounding out of your broken speakers, cutting through the humidity, trailing out the window, whining and crying with the same alleviating sense as the sound of a pen tracing across old paper. And you take no enlightening message away, and you can't marvel in the beauty of the words or composition, and you're fairly sure you heard Prince do an electronic cover of this once before, and you're even more sure that neither version is any good but jesus, that sounds great. And with the clicking of fingers rolling freely across keys, your ambiguous advil starts to lose strength, but your hands keep flying and the words keep coming and I hardly know you, but you’re still on my mind.