I’m a bit too likely to exactly mimic people and, while I wanted to write a list of all the incongruous things I removed from my office (teaching at the U.S. Air Force Academy) when I retired from the military, I went with this instead:
What competes in the room where she writes:
• The cactus wrinkling because even it can’t go this long without water;
• The tomatoes ripening out of kitten reach.
• The question, are there more waiting in the garden?
• The two horses and mules with pricked ears and an unspoken requests;
• The skein(s) of yarn and thread, embrodiery patterns and tea towels, artists’s paints and pencils;
• Sleep;
• The electric piano and sheet music for the A-level competition piece from high school;
• The printer laser toner cartridges and tiny chips needing surgical transfer;
• Matches plus one candle;
• The photo of all the aunts, cousins, her sister and mother in straw hats watching her hug the president;
• Her decade-dead grandfather’s carry-on bag full of her living grandmother’s writing;
• Hundreds of hand-held books in expectant silence. Judgement;
• High in one corner, shifting spectre—hope, desire, fear, imposter syndrome.
• The first keystroke. A beginning leading to an end.