She Only Comes at Night

She only comes at night, now.

There’s too much traffic in the daylight, when it's bumper to bumper inside my head.

A cavalcade of excuses and concessions, horns blaring, drowning thought.

It wasn’t always like this.

There was a time when the morning brought such promise. Each new day was filled with ideas and inspiration. The words flowed so easily. The pages filled on their own. Contentment met me at day’s end, congratulating me on a job well done.

Now the heat of day stifles creativity. It radiates off the ground, distorting the horizon and all that’s just out of reach. I can’t see forward. If I can’t see it clearly, how can I write it?

A writer is only a writer if he writes. What does that make Daylight Me? A once-was. A has-been. All past volumes and successes were drawn from a well now run dry.

I try.

I sit. I stare. I pray. I swear.

I attempt to will something onto paper.

But my will doesn’t find a way.

I change my location, change my posture.

The only thing I can’t change is the one thing that matters.

I write words on the paper. Incoherent babbling, just attempting to prime the pump.

None of it is any good.

A four-cent nickel for my dime-store theme.

I throw the entire legal pad into the trash, certain that the whole pad is contaminated with futility.

So I wait.

I watch the sun mark time across the sky.

The days so long, the nights so short.

I sit in the twilight, in the silence, in the fear.

In the fear that, this time, she won’t come. That last night was the last time.

That the light of tomorrow will expose the truth, reveal the fraud that I am.

A glass of wine poured, mediating, brokering peace. A fragile truce with my darker angels.

She will come. She will.

Right?

Then darkness falls like my grandmother’s quilt, muffling the clatter of the day.

As the sun slips over the ledge, it drags the cacophony with it, a noose around its neck, choking the noise off, momentarily leaving my ears ringing in its absence.

Daylight gives way to lamplight, to candlelight.

The glare now ebbing, the glow now flowing.

My heartbeat and breathing slows.

And in the shadow and silence, she floats through the walls, she sets up her easel. I lean forward as she mixes paint on palette, trims her brushes. I hold my breath, hold my pen over paper. Watching. Waiting.

Transfixed as she moves color to canvas, mixing, filling.

I peer over her shoulder, pondering what I see, writing, describing what I do not yet understand.

Slowly at first, then faster. Page after page.

Furiously, in case she quits, in case she floats out like she floated in. Leaves me before she’s finished, before I’m finished.

Before it’s finished.

Hues evolve into shapes, into pictures. Scenes I’ve never seen, places I’ve never been. Ideas I’ve never had.

How is that possible? Everything comes from somewhere. This comes from Nowhere. Can something come from nothing? This comes from the dark. From her.

Characters, people with a past, a future, move on the canvas. Move through scenes, through conversations, through lives.

Filling the canvas, filling the pages. Pushing the now full legal pad aside with my left hand as I reach for a new one with my right. Hand cramping, but I can’t stop. Because she will.

Because the night is short. Because daylight is coming. The sun, ever rising, will take her away.

People, places becoming plot.

Story unfolding, refolding. Origami of ideas. Three dimensions from a flat surface.

The unseen now seen.

Can I keep up? Does she even care if I do? She never looks away from the canvas, never pauses to see if I see. She just continues, silently demanding, callously carefree.

The puzzle pieces come together, a story revealed. In the moment, for just a moment, it’s all so clear. I see the silver thread winding through the picture. I know what comes next. But only what’s just next.

I need more time. More time with her. More time with the picture. I can’t get the words onto paper quick enough. But how do you negotiate with a ghost? A dream? What do they need?

Nothing that I have. This is a one-way street, a parasitic relationship. There is no buying time, no manipulating the night.

And just like that, it’s over. She’s done.

She puts the brush down, contemplates her work. I scribble furiously, because I know what’s next. I can hardly read my own handwriting, but I know what’s coming.

She begins to pack up, putting away her brushes.

Wait! I’m not there yet. Give me just a minute more. My pen scratching violently on paper, fragments of sentences, pieces of ideas. Clues that will help me recall later what I now see. I reach out, to nothing, as she removes the canvas from the easel and slides it into her bag.

There’s no use in pleading. She will leave without a backward glance. Fading through the walls, as she came. Silently leaving me, drowsy and thick-headed.

I turn back to the paper. Trying to remember what I saw so clearly. What I knew just a minute before. I retrace my steps through all I wrote through the night.

It’s like reading someone else’s work. Each twist catches me by surprise. Every turn of phrase pulls me further in.

It’s brilliant.

And it’s incomplete.

Dawn breaks, and with it my train of thought. Derailed, leaving me stranded by the tracks, too far from either station.

I’ll make coffee, trying to buy more time. But my currency is counterfeit, and I know it. Nothing more will be purchased.

So I’ll stop. Rest my hand. The noise returns, and my thoughts can no longer find purchase. I’ll put the pen down, read what we have written, and wonder where it all goes in the light of day.