The cursor blinked at me for forty minutes before I admitted defeat. Not the story—just the opening line. I'd been trying to write about a woman who collects shadows, but every sentence felt like wearing someone else's shoes.
I made tea. Chamomile, though I wanted coffee. Sometimes the small deprivations sharpen things.
When I sat back down, I deleted everything except one word: beneath. Not even a sentence, just a preposition hanging in white space. But it felt true. The story wasn't about collecting shadows—it was about what lives beneath them.