I am a writer.
But I don’t write.
Instead, I sip a lukewarm coffee,
and think about what it means to be a writer.
I hear whispers while staring out the car window, littered with nose-shaped smudges.
“Mmhmm” I say to my husband, lost in the blurry woods.
You see, I’m a writer but I don’t write.
Instead, I hug my father-in-law as we bury his mother,
and I think about all he might have left to say to her.
A browning fern and expired chocolates wrapped tightly in fine china on an old wooden table.
The cowardly fingerprint of my right middle digit, pausing the symphony of my hands.
The incessant ache in my jaw as I naw on the inside of my left cheek.
The transient guilt in demolishing an anthill at my sisters soccer game.
A blank slate with the vastness of the Grand Canyon.
I am a writer.
But I don’t write.
Instead, my mouth tastes of dirty fingernails and bloody cuticles.
“Just one” I tell my dog, popping the top of a back-shelf Arizona IPA,
Imagining the roots in the forest if we lived below rather than above.
With the drool of a grown man drying on my jeans and the lingering desperation of his mother.
I shred the soggy label from the warming, brown bottle.
Smiling, I wave to my neighbor and think tomorrow will be better.
Okay, so I write.
But I am no writer at all.
A Heavy Flow 