“Our hearts are leaving our bodies.

Our hearts are thirsty black handkerchiefs
flying through the trees at night, soaking up
the darkest beams of moonlight, the music

of owls, the motion of wind-torn branches.
And now our hearts are thick black fists
flying back to the glove of our chests.”

taken from For the Sleepwalkers by Edward Hirsch

I wonder if writing may be similar to sleepwalking, consciously diving into the unknown, letting our energy roam without the mind interfering. Sometimes poetry feels that way. I know it feels that way to me because I don’t write poetry, but often start from poetry-like fragments, “thick black fists” or skeins of multicoloured grids meticulously placed over the page-white. These pulsing moments are each character’s primal wail, whisper or yell, agglutinating with meaning and story. Then the yarn slowly unfurls, “the darkest beams of moonlight” running beyond sleep and wakeful states to tell the whole tale of sorrow and bliss, each twined to the other. Poetry is a window to the oneiric and the revelation, a footprint of dreams. Prose is my way to follow this footprint and grow its bud into a sea of words.