Pebble on my path, you trap my toe and make me question which way I am going.

Pebble, you set me free – my fingers curl around your coolness, which sips the warmth of the sun.
When I hold you, I am taken into a quiet place beyond myself.
In and around myself, an openness that is always there but hidden by the noise.

Pebble, take me to the seashore: the edge of the land, where the water licks the sand.
Your home, you are set there in stone but move in strong tides, rattling over your brothers and sisters.

Pebble, I keep you on my desk where you remind me of what it is to be quiet and alone, without questions or solutions.

I write because when I write blood runs on to the page and forms rivulets that merge into an ocean. A sea – a jumble of words with all their twists, turns, curves and corners.

Words that sit together comfortably like old grandmothers. Words that curl around each other, scaly like lizards’ tails. Words that talk, words that sing. Threads like guitar strings, each a unique note that resonates on the page.

I write because I need to, because my heart beats louder when I think about it.
I write because writing is my romance, the love affair I have been engaged in since childhood.

I write because it’s magic, because I weave a tapestry of words and images that weave their own stories.
I write because it is how I connect to my inner source, my creative consciousness, the essence of the universe, the hidden within, the core.

I write because I love the flow of the ink from the nib, from my fingers, from my arm, from my brain, from my heart.

I write because I love it… because… because…

I write because I am writing, I am spilling, I am bursting through the present moment and pushing into the next. The edge of this moment stretches like a piece of elastic that splits and the next moment is born – a painless labour.

I write because it’s a thread that has run through my life – one I always pick up again, each time with a renewed intention and inspiration.

I write because this is how I have recorded my life – through volumes of journal that I have kept since I was young. The books I have filled in the last 8 years chronicle the journey of my life as a seeker, a spiritual practitioner, a lover, a wife and a mother.

I write because I want to share my dreams and my inner world with my future self and with whoever wishes to tune into my radio.

Swans glide, wings beat deep and wide – carving their migratory path through the south sky. Sparrows dive in the wind’s slipstream. Beaks pierce the clouds like the skin of a dream.
Soap bubble floats up high. Round window of rainbow light.

Tree branches finger the sun. At their feet, a thinker bends his mind in on itself until it finds the Oneness. His toes in the grass, clutching the dew. His eyes turn inwards and follow the ghost’s footsteps into the dark cleft of the tree trunk.

His heart beats with no surrender. His heart was once tender but his eyes are blank as a dartboard bullseye. A melody finds its way to his pursed lips and, without a kiss, he begins to whistle. Soft was the song, with notes sweet and long like drops of honey.

She sits, dipping into the quiet spaces that dwell between the thoughts – collage of sounds and pictures that clutter the cerebral walls.

The quiet spaces – cool refreshing pools formed by the rainwater that falls, sometimes a trickle, sometimes a torrent, on the earth.

Where the water falls, seeds planted lifetimes ago find nourishment and begin to sprout and grow. Eventually to flower – petals spreading like flakes of coloured light that catch the Sun.

Petals, like invisible velvet to the fingertips – disappearing between the skin – soft, yet almost imperceptible. Their colours gold and fuchsia, deep poppy red and cornflower blue.

Early morning sunlight enters the window panes. She opens the windows and smells the air – grassy, sweet, fragrant with flowers, alive with birdsong.

The sunlight warms her eyelids, burning away the sleep of night.

She looked down at her knees and sighed and cried and wished she were thin and that the birds outside would stop their whining. The leaves hung limp from the branches like discarded clothes. She tried to force a smile but her cheeks burned with misery and she could not remember how to turn the muscles of her mouth upwards.

His footsteps still sullied the hallway leading out. Always out. Never in to where she sat waiting. Her fingers fumbled the jewels around her neck, cracked and useless like broken glass crunched beneath boot soles that slammed in her face.

His lip prints smudged on the mug he drank from the day he left that sat next to the sink, unwashed, untouched. His words came back to her in a flurry of noise that now meant nothing.

He turned before he left and smiled as if he were pleased to be standing on her heart and wiping his feet before going out into the street.

She dropped the teabag into the saucer and watched the brown liquid ooze through its paper, staining the white china. Her cup was cold and the milk left an oily film on the surface of the drink. She licked her fingertip and looked out of the window vacantly, waiting as she had done every day since he had left two years before.

“I’m going to go for the smoked salmon bagel, I think,” Maurice said smiling as he drummed his fingers lightly on the laminate table top. Betty smiled softly too, for that was what he always said when they came for Sunday brunch at Roni’s. And he’d have a filter coffee, an orange juice and end with a jam-filled doughnut.

When Donny, the owner’s grandson came to take their order, Maurice reeled off his request, which Donny dutifully noted down on his pad, just as he did every Sunday.
“And you Ma’am, what will you be having?” Betty looked up at the young man, his sparky eyes, nose dotted with freckles. She bit her lip, hesitated. Donny raised his eyebrows.

“Well. I think I’ll try the pancakes – with maple syrup,” she said slowly, deliberately. The drumming of Maurice’s fingers stopped. He reached across the table, touched her hand. “No, no, don’t be silly. She’ll have her usual – cream cheese bagel with cucumber sliced not-too-thick-not-too-thin.”
“No, dear. I’d like to try the pancakes today,” Betty said, still smiling.
Donny’s eyes darted from the woman to her husband. “Uh, should I come back in a minute? Give you folks a bit of time to decide?”
“Yes, son. That would be best.” Donny walked back over to the counter.

“Now, Betty, just what do you think you’re playing at?”
“Playing at? Oh, Maurice, don’t be such a stick-in-the-mud. I’ve been eating cream cheese bagels every Sunday for the last twenty-eight years. Can’t I try something different for a change?”
“I’m not trying anything different, am I?” His voice dropped to a whisper. “Do you see me going around ordering somethin’ new? No. Just same old smoked salmon bagel and coffee for me. Same as always.”
Betty sighed, “But…”
“Come on. You’re not feeling yourself. Just stick with your usual and you’ll feel a whole lot better.”
“I feel fine, Maurice. But, if it makes you happy…”
“That’s my girl,” said Maurice, patting her hand. He waved to Donny who returned with pencil and pad in hand.

In the silent, stirring, yearning depths of herself
an unheard song like a hushed whisper
called for some magic to weave itself into a spell
that danced on the page.

She felt nourished by tales of wizards
chased by shadows
and turning to hunt the darkness
with a staff bleached in light.

And she longed to tell a tale
not unlike those she poured over;
thinking that maybe in that
lay the quenching
of her soul’s thirst.