Sore

Today, everything hurts.
I have a full eight hours in the studio, but nothing is working, and I am finding it hard to be philosophical.
The albino leaf has been abandoned - I have already cut up the paper to re-use. The eggs in their little newspaper box are good, but the torn surface of the drawing seems at odds with the smooth surfaces I am trying to describe, and there is nothing to be done about it.
I have started to draw the little cocktail umbrella I found last week at the night market. I watched it for half an hour, as it was buffeted and trampled by the crowd, its shape changing moment to moment. I have always found cocktail umbrellas so enchanting, and there was something poignant and mesmerising about its plight. I rescued it and brought it home.
But my drawing just looks mean and cramped. I will try again.
I am not able to rise above heartbreak, today, either. I have been doing so well! But today my spirit can't emerge from the sorry, bottom-line knowledge that I put all my love on the line, the best and bravest of myself, and I lost.
I am indulging in that timeless, irrational question: why me?
Of course I am. My gut is sore and heavy with the monthly reminder that I am still not a mother. I know the drill. By tomorrow, this cloud will have lifted and I will feel glad again. After all, I am an independent young woman with the world at her feet, right?
I opened at random my book of Hafiz poems, and arrived at two lines overflowing from the previous page.

'Nothing evolves us
Like love'

Well, thank you, Hafiz.
But today I am a cave woman.