On 7th

There is a house I thought abandoned, on 7th street near where the fateful car crash happened a few months ago, with a large magnolia tree growing over the eves and thorns of its small plot. Yesterday, my house became too small to hold me, and the hours of work sat on my conscious, taunting me through the setting sun. I went strolling through the neighborhood, flaneur indeed, so that my evening was more than sleeping off the weight of the working day. The magnolia tree was bursting with white outstretched hands, blooms as large as my head and I couldn’t help but covet one for my yellow kitchen table. Sneaking into the yard, I climbed the embankment to an unopened flower sleeping on a low branch. It fell into my hand with little effort, the weight and color of a small dove nestled in my palm. It smelled like childhood, an intoxicating aroma of summer. As I trotted back to the sidewalk, I saw a pair of eyes from the seemingly abandoned house watching me. A black dog, witness to my thievery. Sorry, owners of the magnolia tree on 7th, for my thieving hands; Bagheera and I are enjoying it.




Bagheera and the magnolia; curiosity harmless, this time.

Desire

Things I know I could not live without, or, if forced to, would be greatly saddened by their absence:

* My grandfather’s blue armchair
* My torn and ratty silk sari patchwork comforter
* My favorite books, at arms reach
* A hot mug of tea; Earl Grey, English Breakfast or Chai
* The waking dream of Love, in its myriad forms

The Beginning

It is almost ridiculous that I take this path, under the heavy title of “writer,” afraid and quiet in the wake of my own thoughts. Through the dark places and doubt, through every writer’s cliché of suffering, I have nothing of spine and less of words. Every private fear fodder for ink, yet vaulted tightly against my own ambitions.
Coming clean, I would say that I am less of a writer and more of an observer to the written words that maze their way to my fingertips. The lucky words that mouse their way out of the obscure traps I line, the creaking wooden steps to the hope of my thoughts riddled with the broken necks of metaphors and simile.
It is not the world that creates a blockade; it is the things that make my world. Where there is sun in spring, and yellow-green hellos; there is me, crippled with fear that has begun to eat acidly through my fingers.

Is this writing the sun under a clouded eastern sky? We shall see if I rise with it or stay in perpetual night.