Writer’s Blk.

I sat on the edge of my hard-backed chair in the middle of the room, thinking. Arms flopped down the table, blue pen held loosely in my right hand, I urged my brain to work, willing for any sort of inspiration to come. With my feet tapping the tiled floor, the instruction rang clearly in my head, Write a descriptive essay… using one of the organizational approaches we discussed earlier…

On my table laid a pad of paper, blank, except for the lines running horizontally across the white thing. On the first line, I wrote my name and beside that, Grade 11, then the date, 8/24/12. Done. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see John in front of me, hunched over his essay, already filling almost three lines of the page, and his writing’s tiny. Glancing to my right, Bona was scratching words in what looked like an outline? I tore my gaze away and looked up instead to the TV monitor perched on a metal bar in the corner of the room. I read the instruction again. I stared. And stared. Then I read it, again:

Write an essay… description.. Choose from any of the following:  favorite item of clothing… room…attractive man/woman… a gadget – useless or essential… a once-in-a lifetime event...

I could feel Ms. Yo pacing around, looking over our shoulders, and John occasionally grumbling and shifting in his seat.

My eyes then strayed to the whiteboard hung to the immediate left of the monitor, its rectangular frame occupying most of the wall. It was stained with vestiges of black ink. I could discern scrawls of numbers, letters, and symbols suggesting traces of the class that took place just a few minutes earlier. The board looked unclean in contrast to its creamy white background, the same hue adorning the three other walls of the room. Adjacent to the board was the door, a chocolatey brown door with a window showing the corridor outside.  Two more sets of windows adorned each wall on the sides of the room.

Ms. Yo was already on her second round of pacing, and I still hadn’t written a single word on my paper.

I could hear the aircon whirring at the back of the room, where the neatly lined lockers are. Its incessant sound reverberated through the still room, humming its way to my empty brain. The rhythmic sound cleared my head and I resorted to scanning each item in the choices.

Favorite clothing – no… 

Room…

Attractive Person – myself? NO…

Useless or Essential Gadget – my brain feels useless... does it count as a gadget? Probably not...

Once-in-a-lifetime Event – don’t remember any right now…

Clothing… Room… Person... Gadget... Event... Clothing… Room… Person... Room… Room... Room… Hmm…

I’m in a room.

I’m in the AP English room. The room where I can’t write. 

by Monica Felizardo