Responsibility (Advanced Writing Workshop Timed Freewrite)

There is a reason I’m up. Yet I’m looking everywhere else to deter the formulation of the reason. It’s still soft and in pieces. I woke early before the sun to expand the time before I have to lay my hands on it. Somehow waking early turns back time. In the quiet and stillness there is a sense of pre-birth, a comfort from the world’s slumber. The chilled air pushes me back into my cocooned mind. My neck missing, limbs somehow shorter, I am compact. Later the warmth of the sun, the waking air will unpack me. I’ll be held accountable. Not now. The warm grays are the closed eyelids of more vibrant, active colors.

I’ve come to the edge of the land or to the tip of the water. Its lapping does not expand its breadth. It only signals a deep, deep weight along the horizon. It would blacken and freeze my world. I almost wish it would rise up as if on a hinge and fold down over me. But that is its draw, its magnitude is unmovable, always in motion onto itself. It will not come to me.

Standing still, then stamping my feet, then receding back into the edge of my warmth—I stare past the scene. I note the tight shadows underneath the tumbling froth of droplets falling from the top of the rhythmic laps. I note the smooth shifting contours beneath the water as ambers, greens, blues slink in stillness under the cold wet.

Turning my back to the breeze landing ashore, then standing still, then stamping my feet, then adjusting my shoulders to press my neck to the fibers of my collar—I stare past the scene. I note the soft feathers of the reeds huddling into one another as the chilled blow of the breeze slides along their necks. They lean away. Their stiff stalks unwilling to lie down.

Standing still, then stamping my feet, then squinting and feeling the cold of my eyelids press—I stare past the scene. I note the heartless forms and slabs that lean together as structure; they too seem compact in the morning chilled air. I note slender knotted fingers frozen in a stiff perch; their black silhouettes yearn to curl back towards the ground if allowed only to recoil at the touch of the cold earth.

While noting these things it has taken shape. While throwing my gaze as far and deep as I could it has come into focus. I can no longer stand still. I stamp my feet. Jut out my neck. Walk towards the waking world. I pull myself towards the warmth and color and fear and worry.