She tells herself to do this: write when things aren’t right.
The bleeding at the keyboard, words fabricating a bandage. Melancholy drains from the heart, seeping out through the ends of her fingers when she pushes them against the keyboard, words forming those compresses to contain the hemorrhaging. Recording language, smithing structure, massaging verbiage, reaching in the grab-bag of a heart. (Feel the vessels and the damp heat in the heart, feel it pump and thrum: that’s pain there). Words offering self-solace and consolation from disappointments, dashed hopes, despair. Loneliness.
That’s when she writes best.
And so there are big gaps in the chronology of that thing, her life. The absence of words marking contentment. The quiet means she’s operating in the easier and gentler channels of time. Less words mean her hand is being held and there is comfort and care and joy. There is that.
She’s going to watch the clouds go sailing. She’s going to taste some wine. She’s going to take it easy. The writing suffers but the heart thrums along, now delighted.
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mary june brown 