I walk into the room carrying homemade soup.

Not canned soup.
Not something I dumped into a pot and pretended was love.

Homemade soup.

The kind that took time.
The kind I thought about before I made it.
The kind I seasoned carefully because I know what warmth tastes like when someone actually means it.

And maybe that’s the problem.

I made it the way I would have wanted someone to make it for me.
Real.
Rich.
Thoughtful.

Something that says,
I noticed you might be hungry, so I made enough.

I carry it in with this quiet excitement, like,
Look.
Look what I made.

Not because I need applause.
Not because I think I’m better than anyone.

But because I know it’s good.
I know I put my heart in it.
I know what it cost me to keep caring enough to make something warm in a world that keeps handing people dry crumbs and calling it dinner.

And I picture it before I get there.

People smiling.
People smelling it and saying, Oh my god, that smells amazing.
People getting bowls.
People feeling fed.
People understanding— without me having to explain— that this was never just soup.

It was care.
It was effort.
It was me saying,
I know what it feels like to be starving somewhere nobody can see.
So here.
Have something real.

But then I walk in.

And everyone is standing around eating pretzels.

Laughing. Talking. Crunching. Comfortable.

Someone glances over and says,
“Oh, soup. Nice.”

Another person says,
“That looks good,” but doesn’t move toward it.

Someone else says,
“Maybe later.”

And one person, out of politeness, takes a tiny bowl.
Just enough to be kind.
Just enough to prove they noticed.
Just enough that I can’t say nobody cared at all.

So I stand there beside the soup.

Still warm.
Still good.
Still full of everything I put into it.

And I try to join the conversation.

I laugh at the right parts.
I nod.
I make myself look casual.
I act like I am not painfully aware of the pot sitting there untouched.

But in my head, I am alone.
In my head, I am still standing beside what I made, wondering how I got it so wrong.

I thought people would want this.
I thought people would feel what I put in it.
I thought warmth would be recognized as warmth.

But everyone is already full on pretzels.
And the worst part is, I can understand it.

Pretzels are easy.
Pretzels don’t ask anything from you.
Pretzels don’t require a bowl, or a pause, or a spoon, or the willingness to sit down and receive something slowly.
Pretzels are familiar.

My soup is not.
My soup asks you to stop for a second.

It asks you to taste.
It asks you to admit you were hungry.
And maybe some people would rather stay hungry than need something that deep.

So I stand there, holding my own ache like a ladle.

Trying not to resent the pretzels.
Trying not to hate the room.
Trying not to decide that maybe the soup wasn’t good after all.

Because that is where my mind always wants to go.

Maybe I made too much.
Maybe it was too rich.
Maybe nobody asked for it.
Maybe I should have brought something easier.
Maybe I should have learned how to be less like soup and more like a snack.

But I know better.

Deep down, I know:
The soup was good.
The soup was made with love.
The soup was exactly what I would have cried to receive from someone else.

And maybe that is the grief of it.

Not that I had nothing to offer.
But that I kept bringing nourishment to rooms committed to snacks.

Maybe I was never too much.
Maybe I was just warm in rooms that had learned to live cold.
Maybe I was not asking people to worship the soup.
Maybe I just wanted someone to taste it and understand:

This is how I love.
This is how I care.
This is how I say I see you.

And maybe what I have been waiting for my whole life is not a room full of people suddenly realizing they are hungry.

Maybe it is one person.

Just one.

Someone who walks in, sees the pot, and doesn’t treat it like an inconvenience.
Someone who doesn’t take a polite little spoonful and wander away.
Someone who pauses.
Someone who says, “You made this?”

And when I say yes, they understand what I mean.

Someone who sits down.
Someone who lets it warm them.
Someone who looks at me afterward and says,
“I can taste how much you cared.”

Because that is all I ever wanted, really.

Not to be too much.
Not to be impressive.
Not to be applauded.

Just to be tasted fully by someone who knows the difference between food and filling.
Between niceness and nourishment.
Between being present in the room and being fed in it.

I am tired of standing beside the soup.
I am tired of pretending I don’t notice.
I am tired of carrying love into rooms where no one knows what to do with warmth.

But I am not sorry I made it.
I am not sorry it was rich.
I am not sorry it was real.
I am not sorry I believed people deserved something better than pretzels.

And maybe someday, I will find the table where people know how to receive what I bring.
Maybe someday, I will stop mistaking the wrong room for proof that the soup was wrong.
Maybe someday, I will sit down too.

And maybe, before offering it to anyone else, I will pour myself a bowl.

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It’s sour—but not the kind of sour that I like.

It’s wet—
but the moment it hits your tongue you’re parched.
As if all moisture was siphoned from your very mouth.

Sudden, extreme, unquenchable thirst

as you reach for more
and take another drink
as if you’re desperate for relief—
knowing it’s the very thing that brought you here

miserable—
and yet you consume more
willingly.

You make it worse for yourself, exacerbating self sabotage and you
drink and
drink and
drink.

Knowing fucking very well that all you have to do is
just stop.

But the thirst it overwhelms and you can’t think
As you keep swallowing
Until it’s gone

But only because it has been guzzled by you
Leaving you engulfed, leaving you ravaged

And all you had to do
was
stop
drinking.

Envy is a thirst that punishes you for swallowing.

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I’m really tired.

The kind of tired that sleep doesn’t fix.

Yet sometimes when I’m this tired all I want to do is sleep. Like you could shut your brain off and ignore reality for hours until it goes away.

Imagine if things got hard and every time they did— you could just fix it with sleep. If we could literally hit pause, sleep it off, and wake up to find it better. That’s the dream.

But it doesn’t work like that.

I don’t hide the fact that I’m exhausted. I say it out loud.
I hand the truth of it to the people around me, hoping they’ll help me carry it.

But they don’t know what to do with it. So they hand it back.
And every time it comes back, it’s a little bit heavier.

And I don’t know why I’m writing this other than to get it out of my head.

A necessary evacuation of my own mind so I don’t collapse under the weight of it being handed back to me.

Over and over and over.
Again.

Maybe writing it—putting it here— is somewhere where it won’t be returned to me because it lives in words on the screen.

Anyway.

I don't really want to sleep.

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Is this writer’s block?

When life enters loud and annoying and stubborn and stupid and it
just. won’t. shut. up? When your creativity is interrupted or diminished or lost and you don’t know even where to look to find it again?

Is it writer’s block when you lost your words and stare at the screen only to realize you’ve wasted them all on the space in rooms of your house? When you need to speak only for someone not to listen to you anyway?

Is it writer’s block when you feel like there’s not shit to write about because you have no desire to regurgitate your current state or reality into typed words?

Because you don’t even want to read about all the bullshit, or replay it, or put it out in the world in some pretty wrap-around language for others to read while you’re crying out about how much it just. fucking. sucks. sometimes?

I think it’s writer’s block when you can’t access the part of your brain that wants to write about anything other than the current shitty state of reality you’re actually sitting in... Because you want to write about it, but you don’t. Because you don’t actually want to.

Is it writer’s block still if you’re typing—right now, right this very second—with shaking hands and a lump in your throat? With background noises that sound and feel like chaos when it’s really nothing but the same sound of the same tv of the same show of the same people who sit in the same spots and do the same things?

I think it’s probably writer’s block when you’re sitting, trying to stay in a flow because words… words, they are actually coming out and you have evidence because you’re seeing them appear on the screen…

And then you’re interrupted by the sound, the noise, the person around you because it must look like this has been, or just is, easy for you?
(It’s not.)

It’s writer’s block because they’re asking you, constantly:
“What are you doing?” “Are you writing?” “What are you writing about?”
And you take a deep breath before you respond because your flow was broken, and now you honestly, and actually really don’t know.

Scrap it.

Or, it’s writer’s block when they specifically decide to ask you who you’re writing for:
“The magazine thing?” Hurry, shake your head no… don’t lose the flow…
“The substack thing?” Stop. Nod. Yes.
“…Okay…”

It’s gone.

Writer’s seige.

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I. The Taste: An Acquired Venom

I am swallowing the copper weight of it again. It tastes like a split lip and a rusted secret. I remember when the bitter taste was foul; I hated the way it stung as it spread from my tongue until it coated the back of my throat. I thought it was poison. I minded my manners then— because girls don’t spit—so I held it behind my teeth until the pressure made me gag, praying it would dissolve if I just kept my mouth shut.

But I grew older, and I began to understand what they meant by an acquired taste. Now, it hits me differently—harder, stronger, and finally, out loud. It is a metallic salt that coats my tongue until every word I speak comes out tasting like a wound. The spit strings from my teeth as the rage overtakes my etiquette until I have none left to give. When the vessel is finally spewed and emptied, I look around at the wreckage, fully aware, and I find that I don’t mind anymore.

II. The Sight: The Solace of the Stain

It started as a single, trembling point of pressure— the kind of tension that has nowhere to go but down. Then the point snapped. I was holding the pen too tightly; I should have known better than to think I had any business with a perfect, white canvas. The white was too bright, too clinical, entirely unmarked by the reality of me. It was an invitation for a disaster I was already carrying.

The pen broke. There is this black, spreading ink-blob across the terrifying perfection of fresh white canvas, and suddenly, my day. At first it was a mistake I thought I could contain. I tried to wipe it away —a reflex of the old me—but my palm only dragged the darkness deeper into the grain. I know the ink is smearing; I can feel it wet and heavy against my skin, a cold shadow that I’ve invited to stay.

I watch as it covers the surface of the canvas and then my own complexion. My hand becomes the brush of my own undoing, dragging the blackness across the bright white without any hesitation until it was worse than before. There is no point in stopping, no reason to lift my wrist as the ink has already settled into the very heart of the fibers. I drag it on and I drag it out, intentional and slow, until the dark finally overpowers the bright. It should feel like a failure, but instead, it brings me a strange, quiet solace to feel the weight of it all. To finally see on the outside what has been drowning me on the inside and allowing it to exist. I don’t look away anymore; I study the way the blackness refuses to be ignored. A permanent mark left by an ink explosion and deliberately deepened by my own hand that has finally stopped trying to be careful.

III. The Smell: The Combustion of Control

It’s the smell of a machine that’s been running too hot for too long until it finally catches fire. I remember when that scent used to be a warning— a frantic signal to shut it all down before it ignited. But there’s a faulty wire now, and combustion feels inevitable. Instead of reaching for the switch, I test the limits again and again. I run the engine over and over, and each time, I delay the end just a little longer.

The acrid aroma fills the entire space, and I watch the smoke do the same. It catches in the back of my throat, burns my nose, and stings my eyes, and for the first time, I allow it. Strangely, a frisson of excitement builds as I breathe it in deeply. That nose-stinging heat settles in my lungs, intoxicating me into an intense yet conflicted serenity. Through the haze, I notice the sparks as they grow— dancing, entrancing me. I am captivated by the power of a mind overtaken by fire, and I simply sit and watch it burn. I watch until it has self-extinguished and smoldered out into the dark.

Now, the air around me is thick. The flames have died down, leaving a dangerous heat that lingers, yet there is no warmth left for my skin. The smell loiters; it is not the calming, nostalgic scent of coals at the end of a campfire. It’s offensive and sharp, like a hint of rust— dry, oxidized, and dead. Yet somehow, in the charred nothingness that remains, I find a liminal feeling. In the wreckage of the fire, there is finally peace.

IV. The Touch: The Architecture of the Callus

It is unusually cold to the touch, a sensation that buries into my fingers and sinks straight to the bone. My mind, startled by the chill, commands my hand to jump back instinctively. I tuck my stiff fingers into the clutch of my palm, seeking the safety of my own warmth, hiding them from the frost of it.

But then, I touch it again. This time, I am the one commanding my mind, moving past the impulsive retreat. Beyond the uncomfortable freeze, my skin finds the slick, clinical fresh paint coated over the heavy metal bar. The finish dominates— flawless, fastidious, and far stronger than the sanded-down, genuine texture of the rough metal underneath. It is perfection to a fault; a gleaming, manufactured lie.

Yet my fingers continue to roam, searching for the truth, until they finally reach the failure of the surface. The paint has started to peel, leaving behind rough, jagged spots where the illusion has broken. My breath catches— not just at the twinge of pain against my fingertips, but at a sense of relief so sharp it feels welcomed.

I don’t like the sting, and yet, I stay there. I drag my fingers along that same path, over and over, tracing the ruin where perfection proves to be an illusion. It is a strange, obsessive devotion; a rhythmic reminder of what is actually real. My anger grows larger the more I touch it, the more I feed it my attention, but I can’t stop— I don’t feel like fighting it off right now. There is a cold comfort in the texture of my own defense. I’d rather bleed over the false perfection coating the jagged metal than let go of the bar. Let the blood dry. The softness will turn into calluses over time, and eventually, I won’t feel the sting at all.

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