The Squirrel and the Pen

And I began to write, feverishly, like a man possessed, not knowing where I was heading or even that I’d begun. Words formed on the page nevertheless.

Ink flows out, scratching noises flow in. A squirrel catches my eye, distracts, and then a blue jay. My thoughts fragment and I’m unable to continue until I do, stillness and otherness replaced again by scratching and thought, intense concentration on a fog, a cloud that words and paragraphs emerge from, newborns yet fully-formed. I was not aware of them before they appeared in front of me. The pen stops moving again and I hold it up, looking for the source of the words, suddenly aware that something has occurred but I don’t know what or who caused it.

I am alone in the room and alone in the universe as far as I can tell, until the squirrel comes and inspects me, perhaps evaluating my writing. I shrug at it, not knowing where the words came from.