She asks me to undo this breath of life, the push from a muse’s whispers that each stroke of the pen bleeds. She doesn’t want to be a sketch, a forgotten doodle on a tossed away slip of notepaper. She has a story, a longing heart searching for a synchronous beat of another’s. She fears she’ll manifest as something without value, and so she doesn’t want to try at all. Begging for quiet comfort in the womb of inaction, desperate to keep herself incomplete. Yet the lines pull her into form, and she smiles finally because the play begins regardless of her desire for another way. She stares long into this life, but silent, her tale of sought affections and solo dances trapped by unmoving lips. I capture her birth and promise to make her whole, to add dimension with more than shading handled by nervous fingers. “I’ll color you with words,” I tell her. “I’ll honor what you ask.” But without a promise made for her happiness, she resists. “To live is never knowing if the balance of days will be joyful or grim,” I say. “To live is to know the value of both.” #irispad #day10 #sept10 #doodle #notaphoto #icheated #sorrynotsorry #stopmotion #drawing #iamnotanartist #sketch #poem #poetry #story #writing #writing (at A Muse’s Child)