Here is the paper sitting before me, displayed upon the screen, glowing in the half darkness. I stare for awhile, hoping that the words would find themselves on the document, but they never do. That poetic idea of 'the words just came to me' is so close to being a lie it might as well be truth. I don't even know what that means.
But yes, here's the paper, but it's not really paper as it is a document, digitally displayed and trapped within the monitor. My fingers lay listlessly on the keys, spread out like branching spiders, ready to dance if only they had the motivation. I sip some tea and stare at the blinking cursor, mocking me as it lingers on the first line, never moving never leaving.
I sip from my tea, black, but not the cheap brand that smells like fish, no this was the loose leaf stuff that had a stronger taste but requires some skill brewing or you'll overstep it and make it bitter. And nothing is worse than bitter tea after endeavoring to make a perfect cup but having been distracted by the blinking cursor so that you let it sit too long. I digress.
I sip from my tea. It's a little bitter, but sugar fixes everything. The words haven't shown up yet, they must be late. Late to a party, a party on my monitor and everyone's invited. Bring your finest hat and we'll all sip tea and wait for the cursor to stop blinking. But it never does.
Alright now I'm growing desperate. I urge my fingers to move, to write something. But they never listen to what I say. Even sometimes when I tell them to type one thing, they type something entirely difference. How is a slipper like a sleeper? Well a heavy sleeper makes more sense than a heavy slipper. And it is easier to "keep one's word" than to "keep one's blood". Those aren't typos, I don't even know what they are. But clearly not typos.
I would wish for typos to appear, for at least those are words. Something to fill my page, to make the blinking cursor stop. But it never does. I take another sip of the semi bitter overly sweetened tea and then look towards the clock. For staring at a white screen for too long is not good for the eyes. And I've been working on improving my eye sight through extracts and exercises to refocus vision. It's showing improvement.
Never mind that nonsense. Now I've grown beyond desperate, I'm bordering madness as I try to find the words to go onto this paper to stop the cursor form blinking but it never stops. I ask the words to show up, pleading with the screen and the keys to find some way to communicate, let my hands be the translator. But my hands are too heavily accented and not fluent in the language so it all comes out butchered.
I'm butchering words. I slice them up on tables and in rows, removing their parts and finding their meaning, how they work from the inside out. First an incision up the front, then pulling back he first layer of skin, the layer that our society has placed upon them to hide their true meanings. These masks that we put on words so that the words are afraid to show up on the screen, afraid to be dissected and revealed for what the truly mean.
And when I have them cut up in neat little rows, putting on hats and sipping tea, I pull away the layer of grime the layer of fakeness, showing the truth of the words because the truth is so close to lie that it has to be truth. And the truth is that the cursor never stops blinking.