Wild Words

She listened to the song over and over.  ‘….baby, baby, it’s a wild world.  Hard to get by just upon a smile girl’.

She was just a child when she played this song on repeat.  She didn’t know why, but something about the lyrics haunted her.  She heard some truth.  She sat alone in her bedroom drawing on scrap paper with lead pencils.  She liked the different shades of grey she could create with different forces applied by her hand.  She enjoyed the smell of the wood and graphite shavings that lingered, as she wore her pencils down to their end.  She felt peaceful in there alone.  She wasn’t happy.  She wasn’t sad.  She was just there.

When the song was over, she hit the rewind button and played it again.

And again. And again.

Over the years she used her pencils less and less.  The inspiration to draw seemed to just fade away.  She didn’t know what to draw any more.  She thought she probably wasn’t that good anyway.  But she kept her pencils, and paper, and crayons, and paint… just in case.

The songs she listened to changed.  But the way she listened to them remained the same. Her own creativity gathered dust as she let those who somehow knew better, piece together the words that she could never find.

The songs made more sense with the more tears she cried… the more laughs she shared… the more love she gave… the more love she was denied… the more paths she walked. The more real they became and she knew one day she would find the right words again herself.