Today Is Writer's Day

I looked at what I just typed and thought, wow, like a holiday. Sorta, but mostly it's a chance to chip away at the slump. I feel my writer-self emerging from the muck, like Svar in Jenny's Paper People story. I do love that story, Jenny, you have to send that out if you haven't. Bob, your description of the sun behind the storm clouds is very vivid and evocative.

July 16--Half an hour before sunrise--In the pearl gray reflection of false dawn when the sun is a half hour from rising, Julia awoke on the inhale of a single breath. Not a slow gradual awakening when each sense comes to awareness on its own, hearing first, then smell, then the others follow--touch, taste, and finally sight as the sleeper rises into awakening. For Julia it was as if her senses burst into awareness in the instant between heartbeats. She lay still in the cool predawn, ears straining for the echo of whatever might have awakened her, heart racing, and breath causing her breasts to quiver. She stretched out a careful foot ever so slowly, feeling for the reassuring warmth of Roger's foot but found only an expanse of cool cotton sheet. She stretched her hearing past the strident and bossy sounds of the wren that nested in the forsythia outside the window, listening for the contented sound of Roger slurping coffee or quietly turning the pages of the newspaper, but there were none to hear. She rolled over and peered at the bottom of the door, looking for that line of light that would mean he was enthroned on the toilet with one of his beloved adventure novels but no light seeped there. She hoped he had walked to the bakery down the street a few blocks to buy crullers for breakfast and would be back soon. She dozed off for over an hour, waking when the sun was fully over the horizon and streaming into the empty kitchen. The curtains were open, coffee was made, the front door was open, but the paper was still on the porch, both cars were in the garage, but there was no sign of Roger. His keys were on the hook next to the back door, his shoes were under the table where he always left them, but where was he?

I was excited last night by this writing. It came so easily and it's longer than what has come before. See you tonight.
--Barbara