I walked the edge of ocean today, hoping the sound and salt of waves might somehow ease the awfulness of this week’s news. I walked, thinking: what to do, how to help, how to move forward. I’m a writer but in this moment, writing felt too puny, too trifling, not nearly enough. I felt like giving up.

Then, this. Right in front of me. A giant pencil. A giant fucking pencil.

I walked closer. Bent and touched it, my heart pulsing fast through my fingers. Tried to lift it, but it was so saturated with water it wouldn’t even budge.

And yeah, I know some would say it’s nothing but a fence post, but their lens isn’t my lens, so. Also, what are the chances an object shaped like a giant pencil would land right in front of me when I was murmuring about how writing isn’t enough. Pretty far beyond the laws of probability. The whole thing was so absurd I burst out laughing. It was so absurd I took it seriously.

When I got home, I wrote without stopping for commas and periods and the critic within. I didn’t lighten or sanitize or worry about overreacting, or being too emotional, too negative, too sentimental, too anything. I wrote carelessly and excessively. Words flowed; words poured. I wrote clean air and oceans and stars. I wrote bodies; collective bodies, celestial bodies, women’s bodies, body autonomy. My body.

I’ve been writing for decades yet sometimes I forget the potential and power and release of it. Sometimes I need not so subtle reminders. I hadn’t realized just how much I’d bottled up, until I allowed the act of writing, no matter how puny, to have consequence— and that awareness is not only enough, it’s essential.

I hope we don’t give up. I hope we keep writing keep painting keep singing keep dancing keep revealing resisting experimenting exploring because it’s how we’ll cope and pull ourselves and others up; it’s how we’ll organize and imagine ourselves into new stories. It’s how we’ll move forward. Fence posts be damned, trust the giant pencils.