Passin' Me By

Monday morning arrives, all fresh faced bright eyed sunrise over the mountains, a stack of clean slates and ignorant energy. I wipe the Sunday night fallout from the walls of my heart, from behind my eyelids, I try to take deep breaths even as my lungs are rusty with disuse. Peel away all the have-tos that amassed, all the returns to other people's distractions and thinking too much about what to do instead of doing it. What remains is simple in form, not pretty, not particularly appealing, I sit in an oversized college sweatshirt with my hair akimbo, the only thing that exists is this strange space where the story is everything, and nothing else, truly matters. I pull a note from the envelope, realize the quote means more now than just the words I've read before:

"I'm writing a novel," I said. "I haven't time
to change out of this and into that."