It’s been like this for three months now.

   Since I wrote that story, the one with the handsome guy and the shy girl and the iris-blistering prose and knee-weakening romance, I just can’t write anything else. Like I poured everything I had into that one masterpiece, and now I have nothing left to… put. I don’t know, I can’t think of the word I want.

   ‘The only reason I’m with you,’ she says, stroking moisturiser slowly down her glistening, toned right leg, ‘is your stories. Without those, I don’t know if our relationship will survive.’ She’s nude again. She’s always nude.

   Sitting on the bed with my laptop illuminating my frowning features, watching her apply her beauty regime to her entire body at less than one mile per hour and in an order I can never understand, my resentment grows like a… baby. We haven’t made love in four weeks. What she just said, that wasn’t a joke.

   ‘It’s not like I’m not trying,’ I reply pathetically, tapping the keys so that the screen displays a string of random characters then pressing backspace until it shows nothing again. ‘I’ve been trying to write a short story for weeks. I just… can’t.’

   ‘Well, I don’t know…’ she mutters, straightening her back and cupping her breasts in the mirror, before letting go of them for a few seconds then cupping them for a few seconds and repeating this process two or three times. After a while, she gets bored of admiring her perfect torso and proceeds to apply mascara to her eyelashes even though she has nowhere to go today. She never has anywhere to go. ‘…There’s a poet who lives two roads down. Apparently he writes a mean sonnet. Maybe I should start sleeping with him instead.’

   I swear, if she wasn’t my… muse, I guess… then she’d be out on her… I don’t know… so fast.

   ‘Shut up,’ I snap, slamming the keyboard with my stroppy fingers.

   She pokes her pretty wet tongue out at me in the mirror. ‘Does that inspire you to write a story?’ She asks. ‘Me, playing away? Does it give you the kick you need?’

   ‘No,’ I reply as I light up a cigarette, ‘it just makes me really pissed off.’

   ‘Hmm.’

   She continues applying her makeup, the cheekiness of the poked-out tongue entirely removed from her… you know.

   ‘I just can’t think of the right words,’ I moan. ‘It’s the words that are escaping me.’

   She stands up with a heavy sigh, and pat-pats her feet across the wooden floor toward a drawer, which she opens and reaches her manicured hands into. She removes from it two heavy books which she throws onto the bed at my feet. One says DICTIONARY, and the other says THESAURUS.

   ‘There you go. Problem solved. Now write me a story, before I leave you.’

   She sits her bare bottom back down on the seat at the dressing table, and inspects her forehead like it’s a… picture.

   ‘Very funny,’ I groan, dragging out each syllable like it’s… something that you want to last a long time, ‘but it doesn’t help, does it.’

   See that full stop? That’s because that wasn’t a question.

   My stunning girlfriend pulls on a pair of French knickers and slides a baggy t-shirt over her head. She’s always pulling on a pair of French knickers and wearing a baggy t-shirt.

   Taking her covering up as a personal attack, I grow bitterer by the… unit of time.

   ‘Ugh,’ she says, applying eyeliner simply because she can and not because she needs to, ‘well I don’t know how to help then. Maybe we should just call it a day right now.’

   We sit in silence for a moment.

   ‘Hey,’ she clicks her fingers; an idea has struck her like a bolt of… erm… ‘I’ve got it! Why don’t you write a love story, and dedicate it to those friends of yours who have just got engaged?’

   ‘What friends of mine?’ I ask sarcastically, knowing what friends she means but deliberately acting difficult out of… spite, I think.

   ‘Oh, I don’t know. Dale and his girlfriend. I’m not friends with your friends. It’s just an idea.’

   I resent the whole conversation. I hate my laptop and I hate the bed that I’m sitting on and I hate the fact that she’s naked when she’s naked and she’s clothed when she’s clothed. Like right now.

   ‘It’s not the subject matter I have trouble with.’ My tone is Educated and Superior, with a generous dash of Arrogant. ‘Some say that I could write a story about a matchstick and make it interesting. On a good day, I could write a story about a road sign and people would tell me it’s the best story they’ve read. I can make any subject matter work, it’s just the words, like I keep telling you.’

   She tiptoes across the room and begins to climb into bed next to me despite the fact that she just spent three hours preparing her face for some imaginary fashion show. Pulling the thick covers tight around her neck and facing away from me, she closes her eyes and… goes uggghhhh.

   ‘I’m tired of helping you,’ she mumbles, already half asleep, ‘I might as well just run off with that poet. Yes, I’ll do that tomorrow.’

   We share another moment of silence, as I bite my nails and suck on my cigarette and rue the day I ever met this idiot and rue the day I ever caught Writer’s Block and rue the day I ever lived two roads away from a damn… poet.

   ‘Or maybe you could write a story about having Writer’s Block,’ she slurs, as sleep pulls her further into its… thing.

   ‘What a fucking stupid idea,’ I reply, through gritted teeth.