Fruits of Insanity

on writing

Can you see it, hidden beyond the words? The river whispers forth in a rush of ink and through towering trees, their trunks frozen in a dance, and between gaps, the lights, drawing onward, rushing over every gap in the story. It’s hardest to pause at the chapter’s end, you know. That’s where the swiftest eddies are.

Every word paints story. With no skill with brushes or the mixing of paint, worlds open up, gaping wide and welcoming. They are traps, you know. Each leather bound tome resting on the shelf, waiting for some mind to open it and fall inside. They change their readers. No one comes out of a book unscathed.

But I don’t care. As my mind flows between the ink, into some new world and plot, I want to be caught. I want to add my imagination to the author’s and enter a place that is more than either of us could manage on our own. I want to gather it into myself, until it becomes part of how I see the world, until I am a willing captive of its magic. And when the pages close, I search for another with the power to take me away again.

Where is the magic? I’ve analyzed it with a scientific eye and concluded that it’s more than its separate parts—more than the ink or the paper, more than the reader or the writer. There’s a reason that wordsmiths have always held power. There might even be power here.

Can you see it? Hidden beyond the words?

Prompt 16
the week of November 15

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