All He Really Wanted

Really, all he wanted was to fill pages, to spill ink across the lines, to blow through as many pens and as many lines and pages and empty black books as he possibly could.

He hoped that somehow, in the trickle and torrent of words he might stumble into something that seemed like…the way it is. The way it was. That he might blow some breath across the pages, build something sturdy that resembled truth; that he might sketch the places that were continually taking shape in his head, the cities and suburbs and small towns beyond the highways and the quiet homes scattered in the dark countryside around these small towns; that he might populate these places in his head, and move words from the tongues of the people who habitated them, plant dreams in their heads and navigate them through heartache and loneliness and loss, and when all the joy had been kicked out of them bring them safely through the darkness back to life again, back into the harbor of human kindness and compassion; that he might imagine –or, even better, that he might believe— that such a thing, or people possessed of such things, still existed.

That was all he really wanted.