Where Art Thou Muse?

Snow Leopard by Midnight Butterfly aka Nara Malone

Where out thou muse?

It’s no wonder I have to ask. I buried you under busyness.

Perhaps you’re behind the broken furnace there is no time to have repaired, or lurking between the boxes of promo items stacked by the door.

Maybe you’re hiding in the suitcase, or burrowed into the nest of outfits stacked to pack.

You could be sulking underneath the road map draped over the couch, or watching me from beneath the heap of manuscript pages that wait to be edited.

You taunted me in my dreams last night, taking your favorite shape, a snow leopard’s body that blended perfectly with patches of light and shadow. I watched your form blink in and out of sight as you wove a path between trees in a snow covered forest — black lines across a white canvas. You as elusive as the characters I try to paint in words — black lines on a white screen.

I know how to lure you. I move a teetering stack of shoe boxes off the desk chair, clear a space in my mind, and sit down to put words on the page without you. Like all your feline cousins, you hate to be ignored. You’ll come creeping out of your hiding place and curl up purring in the back of my mind, the notes of your contentment lulling my mind and carrying me into storyland with your writer’s lullaby. We’ll dream an adventure here together and leave the pre-conference task list for last minute.

This post was written in response to this week’s Carry on Tuesday prompt. Check out the details of this week’s prompt and see what others wrote here.