ADEEL BABREE

I don’t know how much longer I can keep doing this.

The urge is still there.

The engine is still running.

I just can’t seem to find a road worth taking.

It’s not like I’m running out of words . The world’s got more words than it knows what to do with. The world breeds them like rats. Every second some fool is typing a manifesto, a love letter, a top 40 hit, a ransom note, a grocery list, or a seven-part explanation of reality from a man who cannot remember where he parked his car.

Words are cheap.

Hell, they’re cheaper than cheap.

They’re so abundant now that I feel they’ve become a form of pollution.

And yet here I am, staring at another blank page like it’s a bad habit I can’t quite kill off.

I don’t trust a damn thing I write anymore.
Not because it’s necessarily bad.
Maybe it is. Hell, I wouldn’t read most of the junk I write.

What bothers me is that even the truest line I churn out has the shelf life of milk.

I write, “I believe.”

Then tomorrow I don’t.

I write, “This matters.”

Then ten years later I am digging through old notebooks and can’t even remember what the fuss was about.

I write, “Hey, Ma! I’ve finally figured it out.”
Then life arrives in a ski-mask, with a crowbar, and my name and address scrawled on the back of a brown paper bag.

Ink barely dries before reality starts crossing things out, and sends it back. While we admired certain aspects of your manuscript, we do not feel we can offer representation/publication.

Bah.

Everything moves.

Everything changes.

The river doesn’t give a damn about your clever deductions.

It drags them downstream with the soda cans, dead branches, and rotting logs.

I used to think writing was a way of pinning things down.

Now it seems more like trying to nail custard to a wall.

You hammer away for years and end up with only a very sticky hammer.

Maybe the old Taoists had it figured out right.

Sit down.
Shut up.
Take a deep breath.
Hold it.

Exhale.

Smoke gathers in the corners of the room.
Moths orbit the light like they lost the map a long time ago.
The kettle boils over because you forgot it was there.

Maybe wisdom is knowing when to zip it.
(Which is unfortunate, because at this point we’re several pages into an essay.)

And maybe every book ever written is just a very elaborate interruption.

Silence.

That’s what I think about.

Not the silence sold in workshops, and weekend retreats in expensive hotels with a beautiful scenic view.

Real silence.

The sort that follows you home after a funeral.

The sort that hangs in the air after you’ve burned through every explanation and your seventh pack of cigarettes.

It doesn’t pretend to know.

Doesn’t argue.

It exists because it does.

EXTRA! EXTRA!
TITANS COLLIDE IN HEAVYWEIGHT SHOWDOWN TONIGHT.

For seat reservations, call now. There are no seats left, and there never were.

In the dingy ring of my skull, under a single flickering bulb that should’ve been replaced years ago, two bastards keep circling each other.
Months now. No bell. No referee. Just breath, spit, and the creak of doubt tightening its gloves.

“And we are L I V E here tonight folks, inside what can only be described as a mental hellscape,” the unseen commentator murmurs, voice already bored of what it’s witnessing.

In the red corner, hopping mad, eyes red with madness, shouts:
“WRITE, FUCKER. WRITE.”

All elbows and cheap shots. Swinging at air. Shouting at invisible things. Convinced that somewhere in the chaos there’s order worth dragging out by the throat.

“Strong start from Red Corner! Aggressive footwork, absolutely no defense, just pure emotional damage being thrown at the canvas!”

And in the blue corner, someone who’s already seen how this ends, wiping blood from his mouth with clinical patience, says, “Sssh. That’s enough.”

No wasted motion. No poetry. It doesn’t shout to win—it waits. And that’s the sick part. It never gets tired. Never gasses out. Just keeps nodding like it’s already read the final chapter and you’re embarrassing yourself by continuing.

“Blue Corner staying composed here… very economical fighter… almost unsettling how calm it is. You don’t like seeing this in round one. That’s veteran behavior. That’s ‘I’ve buried better men than you’ energy.”

At first, the writer in me thought it was an exhibition match. Easy win. Heart over doubt. Spirit over silence.
Cute story.

“Oh and there it is—Red Corner over-committing early, classic mistake, swinging for meaning instead of landing anything real. You hate to see it, but you do see it a lot in young fighters.”

Now the red corner’s landing cleaner shots. Body blows. Small, precise. Memory jabs. Fatigue hooks. That quiet little uppercut called “what’s the point?” lands more often than I’d like to admit.

“That uppercut is MONEY. Folks, that’s not just a punch—that’s existential damage. That’s a question you don’t answer in the ring, you carry it home with you.”

The red corner’s still swinging like a mad chimpanzee. Still bleeding hope into its fists. But even its roar has started to sound like a whimper.

“Red Corner needs to clinch here, slow it down, find some structure… but I’m not seeing it. I’m just seeing panic disguised as creativity.”

I’m stuck on the stool in the middle of it all, gloves on, mouthguard tasting like rust, wondering which one of them is actually me…

“And the crowd, if there is one, is silent now. Nobody’s leaving. Nobody’s cheering. They’re just watching a man argue with himself until something gives.”

…and when can I just go home.

*********************

Part of me wants to become silent forever.
But even silence doesn’t stay still.
Everything changes shape. Even emptiness. Even absence.

And maybe that’s where it all starts to go sideways. Not with words, but with the man holding them. I’ve been writing for twenty-five years. Twenty-five years of chasing sentences down alleys, dragging them home half-dead, washing the blood off them and calling it literature. It wasn’t a hobby. It wasn’t a profession. It was a way of breathing. A way of scratching at the walls while trapped inside this cage. I wrote because the alternative was to bang my head on the wall. But now I stand at a crossroads that feels less like a crossroads and more like a deserted parking lot at the edge of nowhere. One road says, Keep writing. You’ve come this far. The other says, Haven’t you seen enough? Haven’t you listened to enough liars, prophets, politicians, lovers, saints, drunks and philosophers all selling different brands of the same confusion? The world has shown me its machinery. I’ve peered behind the curtains. I’ve watched yesterday’s certainties become today’s punchlines. I’ve watched heroes rot, villains become heroes, and crowds cheer both with equal gusto. And after all that, a part of me no longer wants another opinion. Another theory. Another carefully arranged paragraph. A part of me wants to sit down across from silence like an old rival in a smoke-filled bar and finally strike a deal. No arguments. No speeches. Just two exhausted bastards sharing a table, looking out the same dirty window, admitting neither one of them has the answer.

And that’s the part that keeps scraping at me when everything else goes quiet.

Not that writing fails.

Everything fails.

Empires fail.

Religions fail.

Bodies fail.

The stars themselves are running on borrowed time.

But writing knows it fails and continues anyway.

There is something ridiculous about it.

Something pathetic.

Something noble.

And I can’t decide which.

A part of me wants to burn every notebook.

Leave the page blank.

Join the birds and the stones in their Revolution of Silence.

After all, the oak tree never wrote an essay.

The moon never published her memoirs.

The wind has no philosophy and somehow manages to get through the day.

But another part of me suspects that silence and writing aren’t enemies at all.

Maybe writing is simply what happens when silence gets restless.

Maybe every worthwhile sentence begins as silence and returns there.

Maybe words are not meant to be monuments.

Maybe they’re just footprints.

Temporary marks in sand.

Gone tomorrow.

Useful only because someone was here today.

And so I sit with the question.

Should I keep going?

I don’t know.

That’s the truth.

I don’t know.

The older I get, the less I know and the less impressed I am by people who claim otherwise.

What I do know is that the page is waiting.

Again.

Patient as a gravestone.

And despite all my complaints, all my cynicism, all my wise old speeches about impermanence and futility, I still find myself reaching for the pen.

Not because I believe my words will last.

Not because I think I’ve discovered anything final.

Not because I expect to defeat time.

But for the same reason a man throws another log onto a fire he knows will eventually go out.

The night is here.

The fire is small.

And for a little while, it gives light.