Another in our series of links meant to help each of us contributing to this site to write as well as we can:

In the morning, I don’t talk to anyone, nor do I think about certain things.

I try to stay within certain confines. I imagine this as a narrow, shadowy corridor with dim bare walls. I’m moving down this corridor, getting to the place where I can write.

I brush my teeth, get dressed, make the bed. I avoid conversation, as my husband knows. I am not yet in the world, and there is a certain risk involved in talking: the night spins a fine membrane, like the film inside an eggshell. It seals you off from the world, but it’s fragile, easily pierced.

I go down the hall into the kitchen. I don’t like breakfast, but it’s necessary to get through it in order to get to coffee.

I fix a bowl of granola, laced with a bogus syrupy non-milk substitute. Both of these are too sweet and the granola is too crunchy. The whole thing is charmless, like a bowl of horse feed, but it’s sustenance, and it validates coffee.

I eat standing up at the kitchen window.

Read the rest here.