The sunflower

Despite yet another sleepless night she had punched in her attendance right as the clock struck 9 am. She had then gone through her day on an autopilot. Though she loved her work, today her heart hadn’t been in it.

Her thoughts were far away.

Why have they forsaken me? she asked herself again and again, I loved them so, they were my family. They are my family, she corrected herself furiously. She wouldn’t give them up. She couldn’t give them up. They were her very life.

It’s a phase, she had told herself initially, they will come around.

They didn’t.

Maybe if I ignore them they will seek me out, she had thought. That plan was a fail right from the start because try as she might, she couldn’t ignore them. They crowded her mind pushing away all else away, making her turn up sloppy copy at work and prompting her editor to ask if everything was fine with her.

Tears had risen unbidden to her tired eyes. No, nothing is fine, she wanted to scream in anger and exasperation. But she had only nodded her head mutely.

Back home she tried reaching out again and yet again all she got was frustration. It was as if a blinding fog lay thick between her and all she loved.

As she sat listlessly fiddling with the bunch of pens and pencils that crowded  her desk, her glance fell at the sunflower in the vase. Something about its happy yellowness reached out to her. Her heart filled with sudden fresh optimism.

Damn this writer’s block, she swore under her breath as she took up her pen. She’d get rid of it today. Today she would break through the fog. Today she’d reach out to her beloved characters and she’d write. By God she would. You will have to come to me, she threatened out loud in the silence – thoughts, ideas, plots, characters, are you listening, all of you?

She opened a blank notebook and began to write.

This post is part of  Write Over the Weekend, an initiative for Indian Bloggers by BlogAdda.