Once, years ago, I stayed at an inn not far from here, and thought it was the most perfect place to write a novel. This was years before I ever dreamed of doing so, but I thought, if I had enough money, I would stay there for a summer and write one. I would do this thing, I told myself.
I still don’t have enough money. I have thirty pages to go, more than my age, but I am coming back to the inn to finish it, or try.
I am a little behind. The story is based on something I wished. I think I wanted it, without knowing that I wanted it, and somehow writing it released it, made it fly. So now I am slowing, cooling, dealing with the wish in ink and its opposite, flesh. I don’t know which is harder. They are out of my control.
Tomorrow I will meet my students, teach, see old friends. But tonight I light a candle and open a bottle of cheap wine and wear my white dress, white as snow, as pollen calls itself snow.
Tonight I will write.
