Tally

At the end of the day, exhausted, you are washed ashore panting. Pull out a sheet of paper and run through the day's bookkeeping. Count the words in your story, nod. Count the miles under your feet, nod. Take a deep breath, dare to look at the other corner, dare to put your pen to the column on the other side of the line. See self doubt spread like a black cancer across your pages, see it eat your flesh and arch its brow at your tattered life. Hear it rifle through your paperwork and laugh at your juvenile delinquency. The disease smells your fear, feasts on it, envelopes you in dark smoke and begins to pull you under. Who do you think you are? You grapple at the few beams of light you can recall, mantras or songs you may repeat but you tumble quickly into the void and it would be so easy to simply let go (lord knows you've done it before, lord knows you've swam in the sunken place and let the cold water fill your lungs, it doesn't ever have the grace to kill you it only drowns you alive).

But you are determined now to look this monster in the eyes, to read its every ticker tape and watch its mouth create the words that aim to tear you apart; you are determined now to shine a flashlight at its gruesome face and see it was just a collection of sheets in the wind. You will collect them, fold them up, make your bed with them and sleep soundly. You will keep score and one day when you nod you will smile.