Verbiage and Other Grievances by Nada Salem (16, Canada)

What does it mean to create? Why do I write? I am not a writer.

I steep myself into this existential despair, hoping that way I may extract some impressive idea to write on. But as time passes, I realise I am more a pathetic chicken breast dinner soaking in watery marinade than a Natalie Wynn bathing in a rose-lemongrass froth of expensive ideas. Still, here I am in the back of a fridge, slowly suffocating under cling film, thinking with delusional conviction that my ideas will taste better the longer I sit in it. I will never escape this.

---

There is no romance here. Prude words refuse to join hands or flatter pink blush into their drab counterparts, fragmenting sentences with their Arial 11-point lovelessness. Hours spent in pedantic world-building and overzealous metaphors have made my story an impossibly gruelling read. I stare hopelessly at my computer screen and it stares a hot light back, fevered by purple prose I cannot remedy. Pen and paper and persistence have only rendered me a calloused hand, forever peeling and breaking and bleeding barre

​