Molasses in February

The page is before me. Blank.

My words are like dried molasses in the corners of the carton. I need the sweetness to pour, but all I can do is hold the container upside down and wait. The spoon is shiny, concave in expectation. It trembles in my hand, next to the open spout. What I thought I had within me will not come out. I squeeze and tap, shake and coax. I prop it up against the canister of flour, balance it on the open mouth of the spoon. I can do nothing but wait.

The recipe sits unfinished. The oven is preheated. The goods promised. The appetite whetted. How long will this take?

I have a name for this slowness now that at first was only a confusing cluster of dysfunction in my body. Concussion. My pen feels clumsy in my fingers. The screen hurts my eyes if I stare at it. My mind is off-balance somehow, and it scares me a little, four weeks in. The words won’t come, though I can still sense their presence.

It has taken time and tears just to put these phrases together, and now I am tired. Hungry, too. But I am molasses in February.

~

Lindsey Gallant

S.D.G.