Ideas

To start without an idea in the head is sometimes as good as starting with many half floating ideas. Blank space is blank on the surface, but one sees undulations shimmer beneath the skin of one’s fingers if one looks closely enough. Teardrops find it hard to hopscotch between pimples. They are comical in their holding on to the unnecessary curves of the cheek. Only heaving sobs get them moving.

Writing is something like that: coursing around single women who take showers at the end of the day to get rid of the day’s grime; trailing behind a car that’s headed to its own mangled death; catching up with the man finding himself in the concrete walls of his cubicle; surprising a lost kid with a beaming smile; throbbing in the still veins of the person who turns over every night in his grave; beating on the womb of a pregnant woman with strong, abrupt kicks.

A word draws it out, the transparent salty drop. Another word rushes on its heels. Silence peeps into the pair of swimming eyes and sees them drenched with transparent salty stuff. The silence, struck dumb, runs behind another heavy word. A sigh later, the words stumble with a protective defeat.

Mails have a lifetime’s worth of romance in them. However, they lack the fading scent of violets pressed on handmade paper to please more than one of the beloved’s senses.

Homilies illustrate a lack somewhere. Words overflow to stem the rain of salty drops. Then words suck in their tummies and clamp their mouths to prevent flooding. The brackish drop clings precariously to an unwarranted curve of the cheek. Lashes, just bathed, look like a spider’s black web heavy with dew. Sheets sheathe warm bodies and whispering curls in the curves of smitten ears. Breaths snuggle against pillows and elbows. Dawn steals over the curtains. Faded rays beam around the bed. Laptop churns air in the hushed silence. A nudge and cuddle later, dawn nuzzles between the two figures and bides its time.

An arm curls around an idea brought to life by the mushrooming dawn. The pillow soothes a warm cheek and affectionate legs entangle the supple idea in frayed cotton pyjamas.

***

To start without an idea in the head is sometimes as good as starting with many half ideas perched on the edges of sunrise yellow. Blank space is blank on the surface, but only you can see undulations shimmer just beneath the skin of my fingers because you look close enough.