Ebony

I think that there is possibly nothing more beautiful then feeling air move in and out of lungs. Of lying your hand or your cheek against another's chest, and feel it rise and fall with life. The way the wind eddies in swirls through the deep passages of the core, and exhales in little puffs.

On a hard day when I come home spent, I love to sneak into bed when all the lights are off and the darkness is impish and rest my cheek against Bingley's heartbeat and feel the tidal wave of air as he breathes.

I cannot write at present and I cannot not write. It is a strange dichotomy that paralyses my fingers and my thoughts. I lie here now, with the Possum curled against my breast, his head rising and falling with my breath and I want to write of the beauty and the savage pain that nips in on the early Spring breeze, but instead I close my eyes and feel the ripples of air in my chest.

Blogging feels natural and clunky at the same time. Ephmeral sparkler writing in the night, little plumes of smoke trailing behind. I feel somewhat as though I've missed something in my absence, where blogs are suddenly about angling for sponsors and gabbing about conferences where you can learn how to make your blog popular. As if after a manicure and a style session and haircut the latest thing to require a salon is a blog.

And me and my whimsical thoughts and my words disappearing into the night sky as the trails dissipate into the darkness wonder if I've missed something. Wonder what happened to all the places filled with thoughts and words that weren't accompanied by hashtags and obscure twitter conversations and an emptiness of thought or feeling. Where you can learn how to make your header a brand and your words a marketing tool. And I shrink back into my standard template, and miss my navy background and simple text and limited add-ons and wonder why I write at all.

I have been drawing occasionally, but with the self confidence of the shattered, not helped by my disastrous interview. I'm not sure when it happened that I began to be afraid of things, and unsure of myself, but they all bubbled to the surface in the middle of an interview where I should have shone like an electric star. And instead fizzled and blew out, extinguished, while my 10 interviewers blinked in the darkness and wondered why they were there.

And sometimes I still feel lost, but when I am curled up in bed, with my fingers stained with graphite that smudges into the chewed edges of my nails and wipes across a cheek unnoticed, and a black cat curled into my knees and my cheek against a chest that warmly rises and falls, and covers me in breath: suddenly all that fades away, leaves me in the friendly darkness, and deep in my heart the Gleam flickers stubbornly, threatening to tip forth any moment into my veins, and reminds me.

36 days until Paris