A Kind of Magic

"People disappear when they die. Their voice, their laughter, the warmth of their breath. Their flesh. Eventually their bones. All living memory of them ceases. This is both dreadful and natural. Yet for some there is an exception to this annihilation. For in the books they write they continue to exist...Through the written word they can anger you or make you happy. They can comfort you. They can perplex you. They can alter you. All this, even though they are dead. Like flies in amber, like corpses frozen in the ice, that which according to the laws of nature should pass away is, by the miracle of ink on paper, preserved. It is a kind of magic.”       

~Diane Setterfield~  

A kind of magic in the words I throw on the page, the heart I let bleed black ink, the many selves I have shed & left behind. December closing in after what has been a hard end to a hard year. December, the month of bones. The month my mother died. But, I am trying to keep a part of her like the flies in amber, writing my memories out. Saving her. Preserving her. Lately she has come to me in dreams. Just her hands or just her in profile or just her voice. I can't get the whole of who she was. I see her in the mirror when I look at myself for just a second. I cry in the shower because the missing of her takes over & it is only when I am naked & alone & enveloped in the hot water that I feel like I can add my tears to the uncontained mess of all of this. I need her now. More than ever. She is gone. Two realities that break my life open.

I find myself returning to words again in the spirit of all that is lost. Scratching the surface of the paper to see if I can find her inside of it. Find myself inside of it. Find my characters inside of it--these women who cannot speak. These women who only are spared from annihilation by the smooth weight of my pen. Yes. I suppose it is a kind of magic. 

I have left social media for a little while and so my words here will go out into the electronic void unannounced & unread. Except for you, dear you, who has gotten this far. I am preserved by your reading of this. I am unceasing. I wonder about you on the other side of the screen. Where do you live? What have you lost? What bones are left behind? May we both find redemption & permanence in the life lived in the spaces between our words.