I used to could write. I used to actually be quite good at it. I thought I wasn’t, of course. Isn’t that always how it is? It’s like when I look at old photos of myself. At the time, I thought they were hideous, but I look back and wonder what I was thinking. Look at me now. Much worse. I don’t think I’ll look back on this writing and find it anything wonderful. First of all, I rarely do it anymore, if at all. The talent buried in the backyard or, if not buried, neglected. I have a tab open on my computer that has been there for weeks. It’s a story I started about a girl I knew in junior high. I felt an uncommon urge to write it when I started, but then got distracted by life and the urge waned, so there it sits. A bell binks, a voice calls, “Mama!” A dog barks in a way that says someone is here. Something anything nothing calling me away from doing this and so the talent wanes, if indeed it is a talent at all. Have discipline, all the books say. What the books don’t mention is that even when one is disciplined about making the time, if the urge to say something meaningful isn’t there, then the words that come are not very good. Maybe that’s part of the discipline, to suck at it most of the time? I don’t know. I don’t know. I just don’t know.