Words on a Whisper
The ideas flowed like the constant river, connecting lakes and oceans just brimming with them.
They never stopped.
Then one day they vanished, without a trace. A single idea would spark and she decided to never take those gifts for granted. She sat and wrote and wrote until her phalanges left tender fingertips.
New ideas start to whisper, softly at first. She writes and writes and prays to a god she’s never been sure existed, but she counts her blessings and writes anyway.
The whispers get louder and more frequent. Yes! she says, I hear them. She stops whatever she’s doing to sit and write, convinced that’s what has to be done.
She’ll never take another idea for granted.
She writes and writes and prays, and the ideas tail the whispers again and again.
Then, something happens. It’s always “something”.
A hurricane or an illness — something breaks her concentration, her dedication.
And the whispers cease.
She tries and tries and writes and writes, but with little inspiration the words are hollow and frail.
She waits for them, she writes and waits, hoping ideas will return on the tail of a whisper, a dream — anything.
Her words lessen and she begins to lose hope.
Then, there! She witnesses something that ignites an idea that wakens the whisper and rolls out the river. The flow is back, it’s back!
Now she prays for no more hurricanes, no more illnesses, no more bullshit — nothing to quiet the whispers tailed by ideas she needs to create with.
Because her ideas, her whispers, they are all that matter in her godless existence of hollow words and dried up rivers.
I’m Sara Eatherton-Goff, a writer, visual artist, vocalist, tinkerer, and mom-person. I live and write in Seattle, Washington. Check out some of my collective works on my website, and subscribe to my newsletter Life and Other Stories for the most current essays, short fiction, musings, and more.
