When the Fog Distills

“The secret to getting ahead is getting started,” she remarked, smiling at me from over her shoulder, the sun twirling her brown hair into gold. I had been stubborn and corrected her, as though Mark Twain would have cared. She had frowned then, saying it didn’t sound right that way, and continued along the lake bend, her feet light on the waterlogged mud, mine heavy and sinking behind her. I took the diversion to ignore what she had said.

“Just do it,” she whispered to me that evening, her arms encircled around my waist and her head light on my shoulder. I half-heartedly teased her for quoting the Nike slogan as we stood in front of the full wash basin. She rolled her eyes at my reflection in the kitchen window.

We looked like ghosts in the darkness, apart from the world. Even still, she looked full of life as she gazed at me. Her hazel eyes were paled in the reflection, but I could envision every colour from memory. I, on the other hand, looked like I had been forced to eat my brother’s cat in front of him.

I sighed, my fingers pulled tight on the porcelain of the sink, and left her arms for the warmth of our bed.

That morning, she pulled me from the sheets with the promise of steaming mint tea in one hand and undercooked eggs in the other. She sat me in front of the computer to stare at the blank page. She pointed at the screen and told me to write the title of my work in the space for the document’s name. So I did.

She kissed my cheek when I finished and slyly moved the mouse to the empty page, clicking to set the cursor blinking. I watched it pulse in and out of existence, my mind both blank and stuffed to the brim with static noise.

A letter appeared on the page: ‘h’, and a long finger retreated across my peripheral to set itself against my neck. I looked at her, but she kept her eyes fixed to the screen, as if a poltergeist had pressed the key. So I tapped another. Her finger returned to the board to click: ‘k’. I typed: ‘hi :)’, she responded: ‘hey ;)’. Time slipped away until a paragraph sat before us filled with gibberish and laughter. She sipped on the tea and watched me smile with a mischievous glint in her eye. The moment seemed to split past thick fog in my brain and allowed air to course through my body. I felt like I could see again. Somehow.

It wasn’t much, but it was something, and with each new press and click of a key, the clench of my heart eased. Things don’t have to be perfect or monumental; they can be small and incomplete. If my efforts were enough for me, that was all that mattered. And in time, brick by brick, step by step, they would build something beautiful.

We left the document open to be continued later while we set to attacking the dirty dishes in the full wash basin. Plate by plate, the soap suds growing in size. With every washed plate, rivers of words flowed through my mind; creating torrents, joining seas, making oceans. And with my captain in step beside me, I knew just how to navigate them.