Lost and Found

"Tell us a story!" the children pleaded. "Pweeeeese Dogdancing!"

"I can't." She painfully sighed, slumping to the ground next to a fallen tree. "My stories have gone."

"Gone where?" asked Skipping stone.

"I've lost them...or maybe put them down, and forgot to pick them up again. Either way they're gone." She laid her head into her arms and closed her eyes.

Disappointed the children slink away.

How do writers get separated from their stories? What is the past tense of writer? What do you call an empty library?  Has my muse died/abandoned me? Have I gone deaf? I can no longer hear the internal sound stack I write to. Someone spun the dial on my radio and now it's just static. Has my writers pail rusted? has all the magical fluid seeped out?

They say writers are born and can't be made...does this mean I have died?

Everyone in a while something zaps my writers brain like a defibrillator, it sends a jolt of creativity into my flatlined writers brain. I feel a rush of the writers pail suddenly welling over and flooding my parched soul.

I take a breath and feel the words rush forwards, but as I reach for them, it peaks and recedes and I am left with nothing in my fingers but droplets of magic.

I softly try to lick the jewels from my fingers with the tip of my tongue...the taste is gone like a bolting horse...kicking dirt in my face...knocking me to the ground.

...hmmm

I often refer to my writing like its a horse. I'm always having to lasso it over an over and get the bucks out of it.

...but now.... it no longer feels like a horse...has it evolved into something else?

A rogue presence slinking through the recesses of my mind. Coming out in the silvery moonlihgt to drink from my writers pail. Quickly dissolving into a mist when I go to touch it.

I feel a slight breeze disturb the air.
...my hair bristles.
quickly I lay out traps, climb into the bushes...

and wait.