Nothing inspires me anymore. Nothing. I used to find a story behind everything. People and objects were made up of words: colorful, descriptive words. People are now merely made of flesh. A table used to be richly-grained wood, finished to a fine sheen. Or perhaps the table was cheap, hard plastic, uncomfortable and used far too much. Now, a table is merely a table, a surface that I eat from. Nothing more. Nothing is more. Nothing is nothing is nothing.

Nothing inspires me.

“I’m going to the store,” I told my mom. She looked up from her magazine.

“Aren’t you supposed to be writing?” she frowned.

I ignored this. “We need milk.”

“You write such wonderful stories.”

“Ours has things growing in it.”

“I wish you would write more.”

“I’ll be back in a couple hours.”

Before my mother could protest my going to the most faraway store I could, the front door shut loudly behind me. These are my conversations with my mother. The both of us not really saying much of anything, but doing it at the same time. Loudly.

It was winter. I wore a sweatshirt, gloves, and a knit hat, but I was still shivering. Snow crusted everything. It wasn’t even the picturesque snow you read about in fairy tale books. It wasn’t a soft blanket of white. It was brown and gray, yellow in a few spots. City snow. Ugliest damn snow I’ve ever seen.

The air smelled of car exhaust, like always. Catcalls of “Hey baby, where you going?” rang from every direction. A homeless man with blue lips shook a near-empty Styrofoam cup at passersby. I’d written all I could about this place. It wasn’t interesting anymore. It wasn’t thrilling, or scary, or gross. It was normal. It was boring. It was plain.

The corner store’s sign, neon and painful to look at, was now visible. Someone had thought it would be funny to bust the “b” in “Penbi’s!” I felt sorry for Mr. Penbi, but not that sorry. It was sort of funny. In a juvenile way.

“Milk,” I called as I stepped inside the small store.

“In the fridge,” a withered man’s voice returned from the back room.

I wandered over to the refrigerators, and selected a carton of milk. While I was at it, I grabbed a beer for the walk back to the subway station and slipped it into my large purse. I paid for the milk, and then started the walk back.

Beer is disgusting. It tastes like fizzy piss. Well, what I think piss would taste like, at any rate.

I saw a clean, white patch of snow, probably the very last one in the city. I dumped my beer on it. Farewell, white patch.

It was getting dark, so I hurried to the subway. It was crowded with weary people, coming home to the rest of their weary lives. I stood by the door. A baby was crying. Noisy little monster. I watched it howl, wrinkles contorting its pudgy, red face. Then I looked away. It’s rude to stare.

I missed my stop. Damn baby distracted me. The subway emptied out, and I sat down. Above me, a dying light flickered, desperately clinging to life. Then it was gone.

I got home four hours after I promised I would. It didn’t matter. Mom was sleeping. Dad was at work. Like always. I crept inside, and glanced at the clock on the wall. Midnight. I wasn’t tired. There was only one thing I knew to do when I wasn’t tired.

I sat down in front of my computer.

I must have stared at that damn thing for a half an hour before I started typing.

“I don’t know what to write. I don’t know what to write. I don’t know what to write.” Over and over and over again. “I don’t know what to write. I don’t know what…” Dot dot dot.

And then I wrote. Slowly at first, because I was out-of-practice, out-of-touch, rusty. But the more I wrote, the faster my fingers moved from key to key.

At four in the morning, I’d written exactly thirty-seven pages. Not exactly as impressive as, say, a thousand, but it was enough to make me proud. I wrote about nothing, but it was brilliant.

The nothing that I write is the most ingenious piece of garbage you will ever read. You will love and hate it at the same time. That’s okay. It’s my own inspirational pile of nothing. You don’t need to love it.

Nothing inspires me anymore.