Technicolor blots saturate my brain, constricting my thoughts with their unrelenting passion.

Recently having been inspired to fashion a short story, I begin to scramble for a subject: something that will allow my voice to flourish concisely and with elegance. The tentacles of my mind reach into crevasses that are frightening, that are quirky, that shout and scream and flit about with dainty laughter.

I squint at the glowing computer screen, straining my eyes from the plethora of powerful thoughts struggling to break through the clutches of my cerebellum and spill onto a page.
This comprises my writing routine. Each idea that forms intrigues me; yet, before I can digest it, a fresh subject appears, begging me to follow it down a track of fantastical sub-points swirling along highways of my brain left undiscovered. Ideas zip by in a frenzy, ensuring the awareness of my options. The numerous choices, however, are too plenty: I fail to focus so that I can twist my thoughts into words.

Settling on a subject so that progress can be made, my slender fingers punch seven words onto the document. Two minutes later, those words vanish from the page; what I’d written wasn’t the sense I wanted to convey.
The phrase I’d typed lacked the desired color. I can envision the hues, but they remain confined in my skull. The swirls of sub-points explode with emotion. I can feel and see the plot about which I wish to write, perfectly organized for my use, but have no way of unlocking it. Instead of formulating sentences that precisely explain my ideas in a comprehensible manner, I envision wild splashes of paint. How can I possibly articulate my mural with monochromatic letters? I slouch in my chair, baffled and frustrated, and shake my hair out of my eyes, tucking stray pieces behind my ears.

The essay is right there, I sigh.

I can feel the words of my colorful artwork pulsing through the warm, sticky blood that soaks my veins. Writing in a style particular to only myself, the image I create blooms with the shades that accurately describe my brain: light pink, like the underside of a flamingo resting in the rays of a spring sun; pale yellow, the same as McDonald’s packets of butter that are stuffed in bags along with steaming hot cakes; icy turquoise, a frigid sample from the core of an Alaskan glacier; and subtle lime green, peeled straight from a head of the freshest lettuce. If only I could dunk sheets of paper in these colors, I would possess a piece that effectively explains my ideas.

Each sliver of my writing – fictional, narrative, journalistic, analytical – is a psychological struggle until I manifest the diction that adheres to the colors filling my brain. Crushing my eyelashes as I squeeze shut my lids, I concentrate for several minutes on the colors, allowing them to pour through my frontal lobe and into the backs of my eyes. I swallow the hues and am flooded with poignant adjectives.
Finally, I am able to pick out the words that fit my thoughts, conveying the vibrancy protected within my skull. A fleeting concept becomes a work of art. My writing is no longer a string of sentences, but a swirl of colored phrases that have broken free of strangling gates. Finally, my story can be exhibited alongside some long-lost Mondrian piece or Warhol artifact.

Finally, the splatters pop off the page, demanding to be absorbed.