Chila Woychik

A mist rises from a nearby mound. It could be me, that mist, or simply the caretaker__ mower-dust. If the breeze blows just right, I__l ghost your solid, entwine your hair. Promise me you won__ shampoo, but carry me along, tiny dust-particles of me.

I__ engaged in the dance of the ages and the search for a song to go with it. Though Templeton__ A Veritable Smorgasbord is a well-deserving classic, it__ a stanza too short for my morphing existence. So I write my own.

I see an actress smoking a cigarette in an old Fred McMurray movie. She__ clever and beautiful and manipulative. I feel envy. I suddenly wish I smoked cigarettes and was as clever and beautiful and manipulative as she. I want to be that way at the restaurants I visit, as I__ walking to my car, with certain friends who might understand. The actress has played her part well; she__ made me want to emulate her base desires if only for a while. Does that make me impressionable, a fool, or someone who will recognize the deepest secrets of her heart?I fight hard to stay young__o keep the lines from further etching my face and hands and breasts, presumably to trick the world into believing I am young. I__ an actress playing a part. I__ afraid to tell the truth. I fear losing those younger or becoming those older. In the presence of youth, a sort of unseen age-osmosis occurs within me. The years drop away and I don__ want to leave. It__ utterly selfish but I don__ care. After all, I__ no older than they____e just been so longer. I was nineteen only yesterday and they don__ retire nineteen-year-old actresses.

I die with the dying light, yet shine brighter as the darkness approaches. Soon I__l be whittled to bone and stripped clean through, nothing left but a skeleton on which to hang a hat. But have no fear, I look good in hats.

This world rubs me raw, scours me smooth like an SOS pad put to a grease-caked skillet. And pain: it stabs and scrapes and pulls me back to earth, my final B&B, that worm-spun cot of cool black sod.

In this book, much is metaphorical, not as it seems. It__ written for writing__ sake, as if I were to say, __et me tell you I__ dying._ Well of course I am. So are you.

The setting sun threatened to consume me__t could have, you know. It would have been a beautiful death with an honorable eulogy: slain by a magnificent slice of piercing orange energy. I simply turned and walked away; I would live another day.

This isn__ a religious book though I mention God, not a medical advisory though I speak of pain. It__ a circus, a mortuary, a grade school, a limousine ride. Will it be worth the paper it__ printed on or the screen you hold in your hand? I just hope you remember it next week.

PLEASE TELL ME YOU KNOW OF SYLVIA PLATHConventions bleed my soulsqueeze me oldwear me grey like a headstone in transit.It__ tradition and form__ear of the unknown__riving me deadin tight spaces darkly.I cry aloudbut who can hearwhen I stand alonein the middle of an art show_.

I don__ need to write. Madness or suicide are other options, though not nearly as compelling. But I want to create; I hope to create worlds in my own image, admittedly a self-centered plan. I want others to understand me better, pay more attention to me, like or love me for who I am. Maybe that__ it. Or maybe I should simply learn to say, __et__ have lunch.

Writing is making love under a crescent moon: I see shadows of what__ to come, and it__ enough; I have faith in what I can__ see and it__ substantiated by a beginning, a climax, an ending. And if it__ an epic novel in hand, I watch the sunrise amid the twigs and dewing grass; the wordplay is what matters.Simply put, I__ in love, and any inconvenience is merely an afterthought.The sun tips the horizon; the manuscript is complete. The author, full of profound exhaustion, lays his stylus aside. His labor of love stretches before him, beautiful, content, sleeping, until the next crescent moon stars the evening sky.

If a book can save__edeem us from the mediocrity of the mundane__urely, there must be a God.

I read a book, am vortexed in with no escape; my face contorts, eyelids frost, breath comes short, body longs, heart stop-starts. Who__ to say too much won__ kill me? Who__ to say I care?

The Page awaits the Inspiration even as Inspiration roams the world of man, seeking a Page upon which to unfurl itself, body and soul, bare yet clothed in immortality if not immediacy.And the gods said, __et there be a Page, and many a Page,_ and there was a Book. And we saw that the Book was good.

I think that__ why I write__he not knowing and the blasted good feeling I get out of it all.

Oh God, for a few who will love me in tiny ways every single day of my flashing existence. For a mere one or two who will treat me like the trash I am, who will love the smell of garbage and rummage through the bin of my failings to find the wrapped cheeseburger they can do without but consider long enough to get their taste buds used to the idea. Oh for a melodious tongue to sing me a song about french fries.

Writing is a beast to tame, an energy to transform. Whip that toad into a prince and French kiss it to life. We start at the top but keep looking down, from macro to micro, from what could work to what does__ut start with the dream. Nothing is real apart from the clouds, and all clouds pass with life in their wake__ome rain thoughts.

Writing makes me hard, like a fisherman, and brown from the heat. Tossing out and reeling in is a job for visionaries and those with calloused hands.