Voice and Vision

One Woman's WORDS AND WORKS •grapple •inspire •liberate

29: Words, don’t Leave Me

Words, don’t leave me. Please don’t wander off where I can’t find your wisdom. You come when I’m supposed to be sleeping. Truth always comes in the middle of the night. Why? I lay in the dark listening to you, not daring to get up and write. I might disturb someone. Yet, you keep me awake. You have things to say I know I must hear. So I listen, hoping that in the morning I’ll remember. In the morning I can put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard. But I don’t always remember.

Things of importance can vanish before we know it:  people, places, treasured objects, ideas, right words. So, some nights I dare to get up and write, to risk waking another. I get up for the love of words. For what they teach me when and how they arrive. Mostly unannounced, they often come in snippets of gauze and moonlight, drifting in and out of my consciousness. I have to be quick to catch them, to hold them down on paper so they can meet morning’s clarity with meaning. They must last beyond the night, beyond the darkness in which they arrive. They speak to me like unhuman beings, like reality itself. I want to capture them. I must.

They are here to teach, to ignite the hidden spark within me and within all who listen to them.

So I write. I write and write and write. Until there is fire. It’s glow is more important than sleep. More important than whether anyone reads my written word or not.

That words come to life is all that matters. That they be born. They push out. I hear their wail and slap them into being. I hold them, cherish them, nourish them, keep them, read them over and over until I understand why they came.

Words, however, are not children. They have lived long before time and space. There is an other-worldliness to words. It is a world I want to enter because it is a world of truth and wonder, creativity and spirit. I belong to this world and will always be the obedient messenger of words.

Element: Fire oil painting by Gwendolyn Evans

Element: Fire , oil, 12″ x 12″ This piece was one of a series I did inclusive of the elements of fire, air, water, earth.

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