She lines up all the necessary moons and stars for writing, unpacks her bag, and settles into that one corner bench in the coffee shop under the chunky glass chandelier. Espresso maker steams, roasted beans grind, a slow drizzle of rain puddles on the sidewalk.
The words go down slow. Her blue ink pen glides a pleasant thin wet line that does not smudge. She watches her sentence curve in cursive to the period. Stop. One more sentence. Stop. It is a pause long enough to think, a pause long enough to let the small group of voices join.
You can’t do this.
What were you thinking?
She shifts the notebook. Plugs in music. Chooses a playlist. Tries to ignore them.
I mean really, what makes you think you can do this?
Pen to paper. She draws a dot at the center of the page and begins to draw a tight spiral around the dot.
Maybe this isn’t the right topic.
Concentric circles. A shell expanding.
What will they think?
It’s all familiar hiss and dread, some days louder than others.
Spiral upon spiral, she draws her expanding galaxy, out, out, pushing out the voices with each ink line. She follows the satellite curve and curve and curve as it pushes to the edge of the page.
But, what if you fail?
She wants to shush them, but hesitates about using her actual voice. She avoids disrupting others as a rule, but chooses otherwise. She speaks, out loud to the voices.
NO. Stop.
The audible words jar all thoughts, a cold rush zips through her chest, exits out her arms, dissipates down her legs. The man next to her glances over to see if she’s talking to him, and returns to his computer.
Her ink circles flow again slow on the paper. They multiply, mesmerize, soothe, increase. When the last line meets the edge of the page, her blue galaxy appears to radiate from the center. She whispers again to the worriers. She speaks like a mother to a child, We are not going to freak out. We are ok. This is something we love.
She changes the playlist and begins to write words.