Not Me but Another Muse that Looks Just Like Me

Stuck.

A blinking cursor mocked me from a blank screen. This writing thing wasn't going well. I wasn't ready to give up but the joy that once energized me was gone, replaced by a bitter numbness and a persistent sense of failure.

Motion at the door drew my eye and suddenly Valerie was there in my coffee shop. Life froze.

She had moved to San Diego months ago.

She was here.

Something frail in me broke. I expected the ground to drop away in a nauseating lurch or to be filled with a cloying need to be recognized. Instead, all I felt was a sense of fond remembrance drawing from a well of nostalgic contentment.

No, never mind, it wasn't her. She shared the same bleached hair and wore a face so close to identical that it was uncanny, but there were tiny differences. The woman who stood before me was a shade taller, thicker in the rear, and a tiny bar pierced her eye brow. This wasn't my Valerie but then again neither was the other one.

I opened the text file of an unfinished love story and began to bleed.