🐚 The sharp edge of your truth is calling.

View from KittyAnn’s Window

It’s early morning, just now 6 am. I was already sleeping lightly, because the sunshine is steady this morning, and it’s that time of year when the angle is just right that it hits the transom above the long curtains that cover the sliding glass door. I take a deep breath, stretch, and open my eyes. I’m sticky, damp with a sweat that feels hormonal and haunted. 

But the shellac of the hardwood floor is cool under my feet, despite the sunshine pooling there. A perfect place for a cat, if I’d brought one. I make the bed, because I always do. The crisp white linens, tucked neatly, smoothed over, give my life some semblance of order. If the bed is made, the room is tidy. 

And if the room is tidy, I must be fine.

This room would be tidy either way. The place is minimally decorated, and my few personal items are neatly arranged – a cardigan folded over the back of an armchair, my toothbrush and supplements stashed squarely beside the bathroom sink. The simplicity is loud in a quiet way I’ve been aching to hear for ages.

This is a place I could grow into, I think. The mattress is firmer than I’m used to, but the back deck overlooks the harbor, and the garden in the tiny space between the house and the sidewalk is riotous with colorful blooms. The location, right in the middle of Atlantic Avenue, is prime real estate: two blocks from the pedestrian stretch, and perched above the water. Simultaneously close to everything yet still far enough away to be its own paradise.

But the house itself is a contradiction: sleek, modern touches wrapped around aged bones. Black-and-white gallery wall over dimpled plaster. Gold kitchen faucet dumping into a chipped porcelain sink with a rust stain from the leak. The house groaned last night, heaved and popped. That’s the kind of talking only ancient timbers know.

My body screams for coffee, and I find a French press in the cabinet, but I have nothing except for some stale French fries in the bottom of a paper bag and my own water bottle half-full with the gas station Evian I splurged on. So sunshine will have to be the stand-in until I can source a proper breakfast.

It takes an effort to budge the sliding glass door, its silver handle slightly corroded, track all gummy. I throw my weight, and it budges, just enough for me to squeeze through.

Then, out of habit, or maybe neurosis, I text Craig: I’m alive. Sweaty again, though. But the view of the harbor is killer.

He thumbs-up the message right away and doesn’t reply.

***

I wrote this almost two years ago — when KittyAnn’s voice was still an echo of my own. I shaped her impromptu trip north around a serendipitous change of vacation plans that had just been hoisted onto my own life. And I plopped her into a fictional version of a place of reverence that held me as a child.

Then I kept listening. To know what she’d do next.

I couldn’t write the ending of her story when I started, because I hadn’t lived it yet. But I have now. And it’s almost complete.

If you’re new here, don’t worry — you haven’t missed anything. In fact, you’re just in time to jump down the rabbit hole of my imagination and how it turns my life into art through story.

If this excites you, good. If it scares you, even better. Fear means you’ve found the sharp edge of your truth.

Stay close. There’s more coming. 🔥

With all my wild heart,

Sadie xo

P.S. If something I said resonated — and you’re craving a space to unpack your own story — get in touch with me. I’d be honored to hold that space for you.