I don’t want to be dead. I was driving today, and a leaf fell forward, smacked the front window, and continued its way past the car. In that moment, I smiled. The leaf was alive, almost dancing to the wind outside my head. I was to write about it. I was to write about being alive, about the very things that I pass on the way home, the things that normally are thought to be lifeless, inanimate. And yet they have more life than my breathing soul.
I don’t want to be the dead writer who thinks. I want to live again, and feel what I write, like how I feel the burning sensation of a hot tea at the tip of my tongue, like how I feel the blackness of coffee without cream, the bitterness of black. I was alive yesterday and I liked the pattern of every breath. There was a song in my head, not a happy, dumb little tune, but a fast, live beat. I will be damned if I don’t snap out of this deadness. I am going to be living, writing, not giving a damn about being a great storyteller. Great is an empty word if that’s all you aim for. I’m not empty. I’m not dead. Tell me to rewrite and I’ll do it. Tell me to work it out, fix and revise. I’ll do it. I won’t stand here and tell you how damn empty and lifeless my fingers have become, or how nothing in this room speaks. And the ladybug on my ceiling is gone. I can’t find her. She was here for days. I don’t know what about this room attracted her, for even the air is mortifying and beaten.