First I think a thought. It is a shadow at dusk. Rarely is it the sun’s clear light.

So I write the shadow. I put a full stop. I sit and wait for light. Nothing.

I am used to nothing. But I want to write something. I want to write the sun.

After nothing comes something. Then something else. But the light is dappled. The branches that obscure it must be cut. The words put in order. Then I say them aloud. They sound like nothing.

Perhaps I try too hard to write the sun. Perhaps I need to write the night.

Perhaps I need to write late in the evening, or early in the morning, when my son and husband sleep. When my inner critic is asleep, sick from red wine and cheese.

Somehow, I hear the night. It speaks of darkness. It seeps from the void and shapes itself through me onto the page. It writes me.

I try to write the sun again, and lament that I cannot write.

Writing is the fox that shits on our garden path when we sleep. A wild thing. You do not know where it has come from, but it leaves its mark.

 

Photography by Jasmine Powell