Green Light

"Tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . ."

This is my morning practice. I wake up and write. I take a shower and hope an idea comes to me so I don't sit here with nothing to say. I try to harness my unconscious mind and remember part of my dream. A slip, an instant, anything. I want a story to tell.

"Tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . ."

I read so much that I underline in my books. You're not supposed to write in books, I was told by my mother, my father, teachers, librarians. I don't write in anyone else's. I buy my own copies, starting with required reading. I had to make notes in the margins during class discussions just so I could follow the plot. Now I make notes to remind myself why a line jumped out at me, who it made me think of, what it made me yearn for.

"Tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . ."

I can flip back through any book and find a line I loved. I read it over and over again, hoping it inspires me to come up with one of my own. I write it out on the fresh page of a notebook, wanting to learn the rhythm of the words, striving to understand how they work together to make me feel what I feel.

"Tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . ."*

245 words

*from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald