the quill, empty of ink

I’m soaring past the landscape below, the green soldier mountains, the water, trying to gain entry from a place out here which is hostile and shaming. Are the views from a rolodex of memory? Or am I kite-gliding or up here riding a bird? It’s like flipping through index cards to find the one that begins where I left off.

A field, further down the riverbank from where I sit with my feet in the water. I’m in the grass, leaning to one side with my legs bent at the knee, as if I’m on a picnic blanket ready to dig into lunch, but there’s nothing there. I start to question if this grass would be in this place, but I pull myself up. I’m doing it again, bringing logic to this place.

I am Here. I am Listening. 

I try to convince myself, but I am neither Here nor Listening. Not as I type that.

I stop typing to see if that helps.

I ask for whoever wants to show up to show up. 

A bird hops along the ground. It moves closer to me as if it’s curious, this little dinosaur. Maybe it means there are actual dinosaurs here, even friendly ones.

It pecks at my hand. It doesn’t hurt.

What is in my hand? Nothing.

The bird cocks its head, as if to say, Are you sure?

I open my hand. There is a coin. No, a rock. My will is playing tricks on me.

Now it is a feather. A quill? To write with?

I wish the bird was a person so it could tell me what I need to hear, or what I’m supposed to take away.

I hold the quill, empty of ink, and scratch swirls on my arm, whitish henna-like tattoos without words on my brown skin. As I do this, I think desperately, please don’t make this about me. Please help me not make this about me.

The bird doesn’t care, doesn’t register my panic. Just watches. 

I sit in my discomfort. I wait. I ask to be Here, Listening.

Instead, I merely realize that the mountains here are not karsts; they’re more like regular mountains, Alps mountains, but shorter.

The bird hops off.

I can’t help but feel as if I wasn’t entertaining enough for his continued attention.

I sit past my discomfort for my getting in my own way (insecurities, pulling strings on the narrative).

An old man appears. Bald head, big, wide eyes, silver grey curls outlining his chin. He looks like a sheepherder.

Who are you? I ask.

I AM WISDOM.

No. No, you’re not.

I am exasperated with myself.

OKAY, NO, I’M NOT.

Who are you?

I AM TRICKERY.

Uh-huh.

I AM WHOEVER YOU WANT ME TO BE.

I feel I have stayed too long.

Never mind who you are. What are you doing in this place?

(And, in my head, my grasping thought: what do you have to teach me?)

He cocks his head one way, then the other, like a bird.

Is he the bird?

It is gone. I am rooted to where I sit on the bed in a house that isn’t mine.