Gray Light

There was something subtle and soft here this morning. It was sort of gray. The shades were drawn and the light seeping between the plastic cracks carried the cool foggy air of the ocean. It was the kind of Sunday morning when people are still hidden in a world of dreams and even the birds have muted their tones. Without moving, I could tell that the sky was covered in clouds. The eucalyptus grove outside moved so softly in the wind, so softly that I could only hear it moving with my mind, with my wild imagination that paints the sky with a flat backdrop of gray and the rustling of a silvery chorus. I was laying warm under a thick pile of blankets, propped up slightly by two pillows.
The morning was still, I lay quietly and softly breathing, my nose letting out a gentle whir indicating life and movement. In the stillness, I tried to grab the gray light. The feeling that cannot be described. I was wrapped in my own heat and I closed my eyes to listen to the music of the house. As soon as I tuned in, another world opened. The floor boards were popping and the drone of the fridge cycled. There were some birds out there, talking amongst themselves.
A timer rang and my body jumped. I had forgotten. I lay there, in the gray space. Could I call this peace? Was this a heart at rest? I stayed soft for a couple minutes, until I picked up the phone and dialed and gave voice to the demons that always start to itch in the gray light. Together we came up with reasons to be scared, reasons to be mad. And then the heart started beating a little louder and then it was all over.
Like a soft mist beneath the sun, the gray light left. Whatever it held, what it carried with it, had fled this small room. Now worry had sprouted.
If I could get used to anything, how come I hadn’t gotten used to this? It had been years and I was nowhere close. Would it be easier to kill guerrilla women in thin cloth dresses? What was it that my body could absorb? Every day seemed like a struggle. There was always a reason to cry, a reason to be mad.
I gave voice to the inkling of worry and it ballooned, in a second it grew and took off into the cloudy sky.
I wished for a peace that might not exist, or if it does somewhere, it wouldn’t come like a falling star, bestowing me with an easy gift. It wouldn’t come to me like a silent present through closed blinds. Maybe it would come, but without my work, it wouldn’t stay.
This body has to be pushed, molded into the new form. I ache from the process, from the hands of the sculptor, to transform from the mold that doesn’t fit anymore and the new one that has not yet taken form. I wait in the corner, I wait in front of the computer, I wait in the garden, pulling leaves of sage and praying as I tuck them behind my ear. I wait and I move. I move so that the waiting may end.
The gray light was gone and now it was time to write.