Take

An autumn bluster arrives, dark gray winds blowing the gold out of the honeylocust outside my window, I wake with the weight already in my chest. The sleep would not come last night, tidal pulls of all the world's questions appearing in the rare stillness and I was caught unawares. Are you ever caught unawares by the spectres in your silence?

The words come eventually, slowly, each one aching itself onto the page wrapped in my fears and assumptions. Is it all over now? The years beckon at me, remind me of a thousand late evenings staring into the darkness while words and smoke coiled from my open lips. I lit a cigarette recently and felt ill, is this what becomes of us. 

You vow to claw your way back. If you cannot write a sentence, write a word. If you cannot write a word, find a letter. Let it wrap itself around you until it chokes the fear from your veins, let it be the weight that sits on your chest until all that is left is stories, you know there is a little magic dust left att the bottom of this barrel and you are not giving in until it
gives
out.