I asked so little from this life. A husband. A family. Friends. Love, to give and receive. That’s all.
And I got them. Oh, did I get them.
So when I fled my perfectly horrible life, I wanted even less.
A warm bed in a cozy garret. A garden with green ferns and white flowers. Cafés and rain, a good book, a comfortable pen to write with. Long walks, watching lovers stroll arm in arm, and painters’ brushes sparkling in the dew. Solitude. I asked for solitude.
And I asked for inspiration, enough to fill four hundred pages, yes. I don’t believe it is too much to ask for, is it? The desire to sit and write, to pour words onto the page, to create. It is what I do. What I did. Lusciously, deliberately. In the comforting absence of my life.
I did not expect the company of loneliness.
I did not ask to become involved.
I did not ask for the sharpness of a blade, flashing silver in the moonlight. The chaos, the cries. The sirens and rough questions and the thick wetness of blood on my palms.
Nor the stares, the stares, the stares.