The Monday, After: Amanda POV

When Ernest hemingway said: There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed. He was right. He was absolutely right. 

My music box is up to its highest volume, blasting J.cole, the soft tune of his for your eyes only caresses my eardrums. It shuts out the real noise—silence that is so silent it's loud and eerie.

I write better like this, with songs in my ear and bass pulsing through my room. But today not even J.cole can save me.

 My jotter lies in front of me, its pages are a stark alabaster under the fluorescent practically begging me to tattoo poetic genius on its skin. 

Trust me, I would love to. There is only one tiny-pinky sized problem.

 I can't think of anything. Not a single word. 

 I pull myself back into my body and start the hunt for inspiration. My room smells like tea and perfume. A heady aromatic fragrance that fits perfectly to the cool beige paint, i'm still trying to get used to that.

Absent-mindedly, i thumb  the wall's face,  tracing the knobs and knuckles of rough paint. Someone tried to crest his name into the wall a long time ago because there are short precise marks on the wall and i can make out a carved T and an R, maybe his name was Troy or Thomas– tommy.

Writing method number one–just listen to my five senses, and the moment.

My stomach grumbles in protest to the slices of bread i grabbed when i came in. I pay no attention, i don't even have a little to give, i am too in the moment.

Right now, my room is the moment, but instead of giving me vibe, it stares right back at me with its too-cool biege-ness and i find nothing. 

Normally, the outside world is my first port of call when i need vibe, but I can't go out, not with this obese thunder-storm growling at my window like a pitbull.

 I ignore the nagging memory that i haven't done my Biology assignment. Something about Adaptation and stuff. 

I wonder if Mom was ever like this. Uncomfortable, ill-fitting.

I wonder if writing came easy to her.

Dad can't seem to talk about her lately without getting that faraway look in his eyes. He no longer talks about her, period. 

I was nine when i found out that she was a creative writer, and i gobbled up every work of her's i could find, book drafts, an anthology of poems, more unfinished novels than i could count all packed in an dust covered box. 

I started writing then, and if you ask, i honestly don't know whether i am good at it or not. I have never let anyone look through my poems and stories, even Lorita, the many times she tried to sneak a peek over my shoulders.

I've never felt like, or even wanted to. Writing is my way of being close to Mum.

 And even though the words don't come easy, as easily as when i'm reading a harlequin's, or reviewing a book, or writing an essay–they come, bit by bit, in small scraps, eventually.

Mom died when i was three, but i like to think that i can remember her face smiling down at me, remember her telling me with laughter in her eyes that i was unfortunate enough to get her unruly mass of black curls.

 I miss her. I miss her even though i never really had her–and trust me, it's hard. It's like living poor your whole life and then right when you are on your death bed you realize a ton of money was left to you in a will a decade ago. You can't do a thing about it, but it hurts so bad you can't get over it either. 

I wonder if her words stood in an ill fitted scrawl on paper (everything she wrote was done on a typewriter).

Yes, you guessed right. Geek and all, i can't write for shit. My handwriting has this strange look, like the T's  are towering basket-ballers and the C's are monsters trying to eat everyone else.

I wonder what she was like. I mean, Dad tries,  but there are still these times i wonder what it would have been like to grow up with a mother, those times when i feel like a fundamental part of me is missing. 

Then there are these scary miliseconds when i can't remember her face and i dash into the parlour to stare at the giant photo on the étagère, guilt bounding at my heels like a blood-thirsty hell hound. It is an old gold-framed picture of dad, mom and I. I was like a year old in that photo, perched on mom's lap, eyes bulging as if i could see something the camera-man couldn't. 

 Mom wore a loose blue kaftan-ish gown in that photo, gold bangles circled her wrist. Dad is at her side, with an arm slung across her shoulder, his smile is clone of hers, and he's looking at her as if she is an unknowable enigma–i know that feeling. I have felt it my whole life.

I twirl a strand of hair around my finger, the coarse links of kink are tangled into a greasy mane and i try toimagine that she's the one playing with my hair.

 For one extra second, i hold on. Then i'm back in my overwhelmingly beige room. 

But i don't come back alone, my head is swollen with a flawless string of in-fault-able words. I roll over and grab the bic pen at my side. Damn biology.

The unmistakable aroma of stew creeps through the window, from the neighbour's house, but my stomach stays silent this time. I reward its sobriety for this awe-inspiring moment with a small smile and then i write. I bleed the first word:

 Beige.