She lies on the pages of a dozen books, a dozen stacks of references for a work she had hoped to finish two weeks ago. She wanted to write a story that consisted of 10,000 words of knowledge and fine points on the cycle of life and death. Or rather, a little kid watching his favorite pet die. It would have been brilliant, eloquent, subtle in form and nostalgic in tone. The mood was to be heart wrenching. That was her goal.
Instead, her head lies on her favorite sky-blue notebook as the morning sun streams into her window. The large window before her small writing desk she’s used since age ten where she had found so much inspiration is the center of her musings. Of course, she never wrote a single one down. All of the musings were safely tucked away in her mind’s pocket, waiting to be pulled out and put onto the magnificence that was the white page. The stories want to be written.
Each story is waiting for her to sharpen her pencil, to open her laptop or her tablet, and write it down with such loving care you’d bite into it like a piece of chocolate. The good kind. Godiva or Hersey’s kiss kind. They’ve been waiting for her to think of the next line and not just the synopsis.
It’s okay because she will work on it. The pages of her newest work will fill the air, feeding her desire to produce stories, filling pages of white paper, and scroll down the screens of infinite documents on Microsoft word. Or in her case OpenOffice.
That beam of sunlight coming through her window rises. It gradually shifts away from the sky blue notebook, sitting at the farthest corner of her small beige desk, up to her sleeve. It slowly travels up to her face, warming her up. The melanin in her skin reacts to the sun, soaking up the rays—accumulating, darkening her skin as she dreams of a woman who can burn like the sun. She becomes a sun to save a world that worships her.
The sleeping writer grumbles. This isn’t what she was writing about.
The story changes. She dreams of writing. The words flow endlessly onto the page. Not just any page, but the sky-blue notebook her ex-boyfriend gave to her before he dumped her. He had always encouraged her work. What he didn’t encourage was her lack of determination. Because she lacks momentum. The ability to make moves and talk about the work she loves so dearly in public.
For her, however, the stories look and feel much better inside of her head. They play like sequences of unfinished cuts from a movie in production. Scenes half developed cut off at words to describe the next fraction in a simple synopsis, followed by an epic action sequence and words of mystery. The colors and characters are life-like, they are under the control of her imagination and they are spectacular. She sleeps because the images are vibrant, pulsating. She loves the stories, but is just a little too afraid to show them.
She tries, though. She made an attempt last night and managed to write twenty pages, a compilation of three or four short stories that weren’t as short as she’d have liked. She didn’t know if they were any good, doubting herself with every word, and she won’t be able to ask anyone to read them because…who wants to read an incomplete story? And who could she ask? Andre isn’t there anymore and she doesn’t know any other writers.
Her lips part slightly and a bubble of saliva escapes down the corner of her dark pink lips. All she uses is chapstick.
Her skin slowly darkens. The watch on her wrist from the dollar store is slowly etched onto her skin. Her eyebrows arch as the suns heat touches them. She hasn’t bothered in a while to pluck them, so they cast the tiniest shadow over her eyes. She looks tired.
Beneath her eyelids her eyes move quickly. She wants to write, but liking the new puppy on her friends Facebook page last night was so much more fulfilling. But when she finally sat down to write and she sharpened her pencil, her heart raced. Inspiration didn’t come at first. She wrote nothing, drew pictures and thought of old stories she’d “written.” But then she started writing. Once she started, she couldn’t stop. There was an almost trance-like feeling.
No stopping now, she thinks and smiles in her sleep. But brief thoughts of doubt slip in again and the sleepy smile fades.
What if it doesn’t come out right? What if I can’t write anything?
Oh, look. Spongebob is on.
She had watched the first season in seven hours on Netflix last night. The only reason why she stopped was because her phone alarm went off to remind her to walk her moms dog. She then unplugged the TV, turned off the radio and threw her phone, laptop and tablet across the room. All the lights were turned off except the lamp by her head. The lamp her brunette hair is practically stuffed into as she sleeps. And after several more hours, her eyes grew heavy and her face fell nose first onto her new page. She didn’t get a chance to write a fifth story. Possibilities swirled in her head as she wrote. Alternate endings of versions of the same stories swam behind her eyes until exhaustion filled them. The last thing she saw was the dark night sky filled with honking cars and the sounds of obnoxious kids setting firecrackers ablaze.
The bright yellow sunbeam so focused on her small but thick eyebrows treks upward to her forehead. She frowns and her dream, her story, changes again. The sun darkens her brow, her mind boiling with numerous images of an unknown world filled with heat.
Why is it so hot?
Her eyes open to see the window that stirs her soul, but never can trigger her motivation. She slowly, painstakingly, lifts her head as she glares in retaliation at the sun. She snarls and rubs the mucus out of her eyes, the sky-blue notebook—only a hand reach away. She picks up the blank paper with her drool all over it. Not one word is written, her dreams just dreams still waiting to be set down on the page.