She sits to write

She sits to write, but her fingers freeze.

She sits to write, but nothing comes out.

Snatches of conversations, snippets of thought, countless answers to questions long since past – things she could have said then, but make no sense now.

She sits to write, but the weight of all those words already out there, pushing back against all those clouding her own mind, is too much. They laugh as they casually poke each word that threatens to spill back in, warning her to find a new patch, to go somewhere less crowded.

She’s on her second cup of tea. She’s quite full enough from the first, but the familiar action – the flick of the switch on the kettle, the brief silence, wondering if she has switched it on properly, then the slow hiss as the water begins to catch, begins to swirl, organises itself and votes on which particles will become steam and escape through the spout, which will be poured into the teapot and take on the honey hue of the tea leaves – soothes her.

It’s all part of writing, it’s all part of the delicate mask that must be assembled, the hood put over the writer who must become blank, erased, forgotten, before she can begin. Her stories must not be hers – they can’t be hers anyway, she doesn’t know who she is.

Thinking about who she is is the quickest way to upset her, freeze her. She has no idea. She fancies she should, by now, have a clue, an inkling, an occasional wake-in-the-night connection that whispers to her a truth, a secret, a startlingly clear image that disappears as soon as it arrives.

But no, never. Not once.

Is that why she writes? To find herself? Not likely. She’s looking to lose herself, find out less and less about herself until there’s nothing to know, or not to know, there’s just nothing, which leaves knowing at the door, knocking gently, half-heartedly, disconsolately perhaps, then wandering away, down streets black with lost tears, a black as silky and shiny as a raven’s haunch, a street rustling with the same sound of death upon us that’s brought by that very same raven’s swishing, time-stopping flight.

She sits to write, lost inside that veneer of time that sends the minute hand swirling out of control, yet the hour hand never moving.

She sits to write, but now her mind has wandered. Her nose itches, her foot’s asleep, tucked back under her chair. The birds are carrying on like they’ve just woken to find a new day waiting, but she knows the day is well underway. It’s passed her by really – while she sits, waiting, trying, it’s gone. She has nothing to show for it, no trace of writing, no hint of an idea. She could have walked down to the small park on the corner of her street, felt the sun tickle the back of her neck like a familiar love, pulled out a favourite book, fallen asleep with the smell of its well-thumbed pages and old ink gently wafting into her daydreams.

But she didn’t. She stayed to tackle the empty page, to put her demons to rest, drive a pen through their mocking heart, their leering, jeering faces that once peered round doorways, but now perch happily on the edge of her desk, flipping through old magazines, laughing at her choice of passages pulled from other books, written in her leaning hand in a small exercise book originally bought for her own words to fill.

She sits to write, but blood pounds in her ears, blood she pictures a deep black, a stultifying inky black, blood sour with loss, blood thickening by the moment, stale blood that’s curdling and crusting.

‘Help’ she whispers, but nobody hears.