“Come and sit with me,” he beckons from across the room.

She rolls her eyes. “I think you want me to sit on you.”

“There’s no need to be lewd.”

“I wasn’t,” she says. “I was being literal.”

He giggles and laughs like a child.

She plugs her ears to silence him, but can still hear his muffled calls. Plus, she’s looking right at him. His allure is undeniable. 

“I’ll hold you all afternoon,” he says.

“No. Stop.” She squeezes her eyes shut. “I need to do my writing,” she says, attempting to plumb the depths of her creativity. But the pool is dangerously shallow today so that any attempt to dive in would render her irreversibly paralyzed. Still, she can’t fathom being any more paralyzed than she already is.

“I hope your creative juices start flowing,” her friend had said to her the hour before as they finished a long walk. The stroll was a procrastination tactic on her part – though she had hoped it would inspire her. The only thing it has inspired is her desire to eat half a box of honey nut oat cereal, scooping out handfuls of Os and pushing them into her pie hole.

“Come on,” he says again. “You know you want to. You can eat those over here and we can watch your favorite show.”

She grits her teeth and sneers at him. Her resolve, however, is coming apart at the seams. She has a weakness for him that borders on pathological. She squeezes her eyes shut again and shakes her head in an attempt to dismiss any thoughts of him.

Then she considers the term ‘creative juices’ that her friend had used. She tries to envision what constitutes creative juice. What is its origin? Is it squeezed from the fruit of a creative tree? And what does that look like? She envisions some Seussian-type tree like a baobab. But in all different colors that shimmer and sparkle in the sun. The vision brings a smile to her face. Until she envisions her creative tree which she can only presume is small and meek and prickly; stretching sadly toward the sun from the darkness of the forest floor destined to never reach the light. 

“Jesus,” she says to herself, shaking her head. “Maybe I need to up my antidepressants.”

“Nah,” he says. “You just need to spend some time with me.”

She sighs heavily. “But what about my writing?”

“What about it?”

“It’s what I do on Wednesday afternoons.”

“And what happens if you don’t?”

“Then I fail.”

“So then you fail today.”

She sighs again.

“You know what they say about failure?”

“It’s the best way to learn?” she responds. 

“Something like that.”

Hobbled by intellectual paralysis and certain there will be no juice from the shriveled fruit in her possession, she decides to give failure a try. Why the hell not? Surely there’s something to learn from this.

Shoving the last regrettable handful of cereal into her mouth, she shuts her laptop, rises from her chair, and goes to him. As always, he receives her willingly. So she lays her weary head on his arm and begins to doze. As soon as she does, she hears the familiar voices of condemnation in her head. They’re always there. But this afternoon, they are a little more subdued. 

And this is undeniably a win.