pushing and dangling.

Writing sometimes feels like trying to find a gap in a towering wall; a gap just big enough to squeeze a hand through, and sometimes that's a major victory. Fingers wriggle, feeling into the abyss for a familiar texture or shape.

I stare at written pages and stare even harder at the last sentence. This is the cliff. The jagged, broken tongue extending into dead space, where I crawl down and dangle from the ledge. All the while, the hand is still pushing into a small hole in the stone wall. Both of these images are true, existing simultaneously. Afraid of falling and desperately trying to break into a world you yourself created but left unfinished.

The solution is as simple as putting one sentence down. After that, another sentence. And another. So they continue until I build myself a ladder, slowly climbing down the cliff, slowly squeezing shoulders through an impossibly narrow gap.

This is the work. This is the difficult, no fun, sigh-inducing work. The work that leaves me outside in blizzards, the work that yanks on my arm to pull me into a wild dance. We spin, we get breathless, our hearts pound. We create life from intangible things and it’s like forming flowers from stardust. When we get it right, when we move together like two lovers on a rickety bed, we produce miracles. When we don’t, I’m left sitting with ashes in my hands.