FICTION-THIRD PERSON

He sat staring at a blank page, its pristine surface mocking his creative paralysis. The page looked back at him with the same vacant stare, a mirror to his emptiness, reflecting frustration and the void between inspiration and expression. Perhaps it was their shared moment of creative purgatory, each waiting for the other to break first.

He was wrestling with the ethereal image of silhouettes dancing at sunrise, their forms both defined and formless against the awakening sky. The vision burned clear in his mind, yet words slipped through his grasp like morning mist. He just sat there, attempting to mold his scattered thoughts into the precise architecture of verse, trying to conform his words to the image that haunted him, into some sort of perfect form or acceptable stanza that could capture the ephemeral dance he witnessed.

The words began to flow slowly like dawn creeping over the horizon. He formed the stanzas on a whim, yet they fell into the perfect meter as if guided by some hidden hand. It became clear his conformity knew no bounds, yet within those bounds, wild freedom emerged. Line after line, he wrote, as a gentle breeze from a cracked window caressed his face, carrying with it the whispers of dawn.

The morning unveiled itself in layers of sound and sensation. He began hearing the birds chirp their morning song of grace, nature’s poetry accompanying his creation, as the filled pages fluttered to the floor like autumn leaves. The final sputter of the coffee pot signaled a new pot made, a percussion of domestic ritual marking time’s passage. Inhaling deeply, he filled his lungs with the fresh aroma, drawing inspiration with each breath as he walked into the other room to retrieve more paper. He poured a cup, the dark liquid steaming with promise, and returned to his office.

He sat back down, possessed now by the urgency of creation, and finished the screaming tale of his soul. The words poured forth like a confession, raw and honest, each line a revelation. He leaned back in his office chair, serenaded by the creaking leather’s ancient song, a counterpoint to his racing thoughts. He took a sip of coffee, letting its warmth spread through him like liquid courage, and began reading the pages he had just created.

The first page danced with intention’s perfection, each word precisely placed, each phrase carefully crafted. But the remaining pages bellowed from his soul with increasing abandon, breaking free from the constraints of form and structure. It was clear that while he had truly captured the essence of those silhouettes’ dance, conformity only went so far before the truth demanded its own wild choreography. His words had become their own dawn dancers, moving to rhythms beyond his control, and he realized that sometimes the most perfect expression comes not from constraint but from letting go.