The first time I open the lid of the giant box blocking my writing road, the inside of the box is dark. I can’t tell if the box is empty or something is hidden at the bottom that I cannot see. A rush of a dark breath touches my face as a whisper brushes my ear, almost too quiet to hear.
You can’t write, she says.
If I could see her face, her mouth would be pulled into a tight sneer of contempt, like a rough line scrawled through a string of letters. As her words enter my body, I grow smaller and smaller. My voice disappears. I become nothing.
For a long time I leave the box sitting in the road. I walk around it―tiptoe, in fact― climbing over rocks and dirt to keep going. But I can still hear her voice like a black river trickling poison beneath the other voices telling me to write: the voices of my characters, classmates, teachers and other writers, my family and friends.
I write over the voice. Because I must, though I don’t know why. I let the words burn through me even when I don’t know where they come from. But secretly I still believe her. I push her voice away, but I’m too afraid to push with all my strength. I’m not accustomed to destroying things.
This time when I open the box, I close my eyes. I wait for her voice. Fainter now than the first time. It doesn’t fill the box. It barely has the strength to rise into my ears.
The weight of my words has silenced the voice. Thousands and thousands of words strung like white lights on tree branches. The jumble of my letters falls into the empty box and fills it to the top. I can barely close the lid. Now the box is mine, and my mind is full of my own words.
The box floats above the road and disappears into the darkening sky, absorbed into the vastness of the universe. My words scatter among the stars.
The road is clear.
