Diana Darby ** "I V" ** Intravenous

Home Again

Now that I have a desk
I feel like writing again.
It is so weird that just the act
of having somewhere to sit,
somewhere to go
can make the difference.
My office chair
that once sat in the garage,
collecting spider webs
is now parked in front of my new
particle-board Target desk.
And while it’s not made in China,
it certainly is not Century furniture either.
But, nonetheless, it serves its purpose and
I feel like I finally have a home.
For weeks I wandered from room to room,
feeling lost and displaced.
I tried writing in my bedroom,
hunched over my computer in bed,
back curved and aching,
my eyes falling asleep
the entire time.
I tried the den where I sat
in a chair with the dining room table chair across from me,
trying to use it as a desk,
all the while knowing I was getting nowhere.
I tried my office where my old desk used to be.
I sat on the futon with a low bamboo coffee table in front of me
trying to get something out creatively
before my body gave up.
Another ridiculous proposition and position.
Without my desk I have been lost.
The discipline of where to go,
was gone.
Just like in ballet,
it is the very act of reaching for the barre
that gives meaning.
Mind and body are unified,
knowing
from year after year
the routine of what is to come.
Here,
it is the desk.
The wood.
The chair,
that provide structure
and ultimately,
the path
to words.
True,
it is not the desk I’ve always dreamed of having,
and I probably won’t even keep it.
But it is a desk.
I can get my legs under it and
I can go to it at night
and in the day.
And it is there for me,
my silent companion,
waiting for my every word.