Honestly,

A bright pink post it note on my computer keyboard reads don't be precious, and I drag the processor across the village to cram words into it at every turn. The bartender hands me my drink as I walk in, I forget that I do not live here, you could have fooled me. In my youth I manically raced into change before it ran me over, but now I revel in the routines, breathe easier in familiarity. They ridicule me for the post its and printed sheets of paper but a story isn't real unless I can feel it, unless I can run my fingertips across the ink and imagine it in edits, I told a story once and it had potential but I want it to have magic so here I am. He asks to read it, you say only yes now, whoever said we cannot change was only too sad to see the beauty of another sunrise.

She tells me she is leaving her husband. After 30 years together she has at last had enough. He'll find someone new, good for him. She beams at her newfound freedom, spends her days looking at designer sofas. I brought it up before, of course, but he never wanted one. We laugh like girlfriends in a romantic comedy, sometimes life is light when you do not think it would be. I ran for miles and miles along the river today, the air was mild and kind like in springtime, and I thought, well it isn't long until it is here, and I can wait, somehow believing my words as they beat out of me with each deep breath. I don't recognize the skin at my fingertips but my face in the mirror is reassuring. The bar gets busy. My story sways but stays steady, I lose my sense of time, I forget to hear the conversations around me, all I know is there are piles of paper around me that are slowly, slowly, arranging themselves like I hoped they might, it took me years of pain to become the person these pages needed me to be but I am here now.

I'm not going anywhere until this story is told.

I'm not going anywhere until this story is spun in magic.