...at 1:30pm on a Thursday in August...

        What do you write when the words won't come out right? How do you leave that empty space?

        I sat down today, with every intention of writing. I needed to write. Needed.  

        There's been...a lot...going on, or going about...and I realized that I needed to sit down and tune out and self-soothe.  I needed to, for at least a little while, shut down everyone else's needs and wants and just address my own.

        So I did.  Or, I tried to.

        I prepped the French press.  I made my son a snack tray and settled him in with a project.  I dropped some music in a play-list.  I turned off the phone, locked the front door and dimmed the light.

        And yet here I sit: headphones on~ coffee mug full ~peace and quiet at last.  And  I'm caught in the type-delete cycle.  My fingers fly across the keyboard, but as my eyes track the words appearing, they fall flat and I go back, deleting words and sentences and paragraphs and pages.  Deleting...everything.  

        I feel the words on the tip of my tongue, but none of them stick on the page.  I feel like I'm singing off-key, or dancing off-beat.

        It's as though the more I try to focus, the more ephemeral it becomes.

        It's like this photo...

        We were hiking recently, when I took this photo. We'd been at it for about an hour, making our slow and steady way on a trail that wound uphill through the woods with seemingly no end in sight. The trail was well-worn but rugged, rocks and roots reaching out to trip us as we walked. It was hot and humid, and the air thick under the canopy of trees. We were both winded, struggling to push forward, when we turned round a bend and the trees opened up and the sun shone through...sparking off the trail. I stopped and hunched down, trying to photograph the brilliant rainbow sparkle glinting off the rocks. It was...remarkable. This dazzle of light that made us forget, momentarily, how hot and tired and frustrated and 'done' we were. 

        And this photo?

        Shows...

        Nothing. 

      It's empty of the sparkle...the brilliance...the dazzle. It's empty of the words. 

        And so, apparently, am I.

~Leanna