Light

After he left the writer no longer wrote on paper. Words filled her head, led her mind on journeys beyond the mundane world she had known.

She began dressing in a simple black gown, no zips, buttons or ties, a simple form, no shaping or shading. It would have slipped on and off easily over the head, if she’d bothered. Once she realised it was comfortable for days and nights, she grew musty.

When cold, she sheathed her hairy legs in thick woolly tights, and moved dreamily into her new solitary existence. Listening, and hearing no-one, she was happy.

In the long weeks and months after, houses alongside her were emptied and refilled. She continued. Life stretched. She was unchanged, walking out to the shops when her shelf was empty. She remembered nothing, but noticed everything. Watching, for hours, the minute details of growth and movement in her garden as it pushed closer and closer in upon the path and door she began to exist beyond the reach of pain or hope. She was the writer moving closer to a pure story.

Only close observers noticed occasional flickers of light through her dirty windows. They saw it as evidence of her existence, a reassurance. No shameful emergency in the making happening here.

Inside, the artist painted her blank screen, and handed it over to children at monitors who were not so passive as they appeared. The writer who had waited, drawing on threads, knotting and extending links, tempting snippets of a signal to flicker, just for a moment amongst the pixels, laughed silently as children leaned closer, stayed longer, lingered before a script that lodged deep in their hearts.

Her warm, beaten longings echoed across continents, had woven another world into existence.