Stop and write about the “inspiration graveyard” if you wish. Or you could [[a mind to meander|go back to where the river begins]]. ---- This page is a small graveyard under a big tree. The kind you see weathering out by some random rural route; faded inscriptions on crumbling stones that speak of lives vibrantly lived, leaving only ghosts and memories behind. Here lie lines and phrases and fragments of writing that never turned into anything. The title that never engendered a story. The perfectly turned rhetorical figure that never took shape as a poem. The draft that blew apart in a tornado and never got built back together. Here is [a very short video kind of explaining why this page exists](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_A2fLtAvr2yWCJlPJ1E91c1_Dcyi6Wpu/view?usp=share_link). Don’t be sad or guilty or hung up on words; just send me your tired, your clichéd, your abandoned, and we will lay them to rest here. For example, this line, from a poem that never got written, popped into my head while I was walking to work—born 1999; died 1999: - whilst [[brass and iron]], [[steam and sky]], in harmony sing, *repent!* Here’s one that I bought *cheap* from an alien in disguise in an alley somewhere: - I watched myself die. I saw my motionless body, the dullness of my eyes as I let out one last desperate choke. Also I won’t tell you how many times I’ve started and then abandoned [NaNoWriMo](https://nanowrimo.org)! If the concept behind this page hits home a little too hard for you, maybe it’s time to give yourself the “[[finish something]]” assignment! ### Random other examples: *The dog was interested but …* ---- Every weekend we would go to the shore, that same environ where years before our vows were repeated, our sorrows defeated We failed to notice, as years shuffled past, a concavity opening, gradually vast, an absence of life, an invisible strife *(this one was from an American Lit live class “let’s write together” session having to do with Romanticism. I was like, ooh, I like that, I’ll* definitely *finish that — LOLOLOLOL!!! It was a response to [Frederic Edwin Church’s Niagara](https://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/humboldt/online/frederic-edwin-church-niagara).)