Today,

She sits in the large beige chair and taps the pen against her thigh in time with the clock on the wall. The sun is slanting into the room at a more drastic angle now, her eyes are unfocused and far away.

Something is disturbing the surface of the milky tea which is balanced on her chair. It distorts the image of the window frame. As she focuses in on this the pen continues its beat on her thigh.

She has not opened the notebook in her lap yet. She went to retrieve it upstairs but it has been put to not good use. It is frighteningly empty of her writing. All she has collected are thoughts on the History of Islam and some scribblings which she thinks are meant to be probability equations. But she is so empty of words.

She finally cracks the notebook. The notebook she hates because it is large and bulky and no good at all for these things. She turns it in her lap so the lines are horizontal. She takes the pen, pressing down hard, willing the words to escape her. But all she can muster is this -

I am so empty of words.

This frustrates her, the mere appearance of these dreaded hated words on the page. She grabs the tea from the arm of the chair and takes a gulp. It has gone still and cold and she can taste the sugar on her tongue. This does not help and she grimaces as she swallows. She returns her gaze out the window and now, her pen beats its rhythm against the white paper.