Something keeps gnawing at her, pinching her insides then running away. It is a cylindrical game that isn’t allowing her the upper hand. Josie stares at the shadows lining her balcony, perfectly angled, a deep contrast against the sandy wood. Her eyes focus back to the screen before her, words stopped in the middle of a sentence. She rereads what just appeared on the page and grimaces.
“Ugh. That sounds awful. Doesn’t even make sense.” She is disgusted by her recent work and wonders at her audacity to attempt this each night.
“Why?” she echoes into the empty room. As the word releases from her lips she is hit with a fierce jab to her chest. Immediately, she knows the answer to her question.
It’s the same reason why she lounges in the local bookshop for hours, browsing rows and rows of books and never coming away empty handed. Why she discusses author visits with the shopkeeper and her reading recommendations. Why the local author shelf draws her eye, how she reads the back covers and notes the awkward photos of writers with their dogs in the woods or with one fist propped underneath a jutting chin in front of some forest green backdrop.
And the calm that overtakes her as the stories wrap themselves around her heart when she discovers her next new read- it swells her soul. It’s all there, calling to her, beckoning her to become a member of this exclusive literary sorority. And she desperately wants to answer, wants to accept with a brilliant welcoming gift of her own. Sometimes, she wants it so bad it burns. But in this desire, she acknowledges, is the realization that she may get scarred in the process.
She is willing to strike the fire.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
The Same Reason
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment