banish the lesser

Put one finger down put the next finger down then begin again put one finger down put the next finger down. This is how to be a writer in case you have forgotten. In case your foot froze and fell off inside your boot and all you thought about was pain day after day. In case a child somewhere near you a grown child you loved died and you didn't get to go to the funeral. Begin. Put one finger down put the next finger down play the keyboard like a drum until your fingers bleed. In case you hear several fire engines just up the street on a Sunday morning in case you are getting divorced and moving to another house a haunted duplex with injured children living in it and your freshly minted ex-husband lets your feral cat loose a cat named Fledge named from C.S. Lewis's "The Magician's Nephew" a cat small in size but wild in imagination out the door and gone in spite of many warnings about being careful with the cat and you never find her even though you go to the old house the old neighborhood at three in the morning every day for weeks calling her name sobbing her name even though you put up posters Fledge never reappears because she doesn't know where her new house is. In case you realize the loss of your cat is much worse than the loss of your husband who had been lost all along. Put one finger down put the next finger down then begin again write it out make order of the Senseless World and Terrible America by putting one finger down and then the next in case your brother has a child he never gets to see in case that child is challenged from different from the start in case the child was born in a dank town then whisked away from your brother or you were whisked away and so you never knew each other put one finger down and then the next do it if you want to be a writer if you ever want to be a writer in case you were raped in front of your own goddamned house in a stranger's car put one finger down and then the next this is how. you. do. it. This is how to write. Open your mouth outside on a wintry day and see if birds don't fly out any kind of bird see if they don't fly right out on your plumed breath riding your breath like a Robert August surfboard. Cover your ears and open your mouth to hear the birds talk one to another in whispers. This is how to do it. One finger at a time moving forward over the waves that's right now get up and scream your fool head off. One finger at a time.

Photo by Page Loudon