~ Written by Danielle N Bilski ~

Page unknown

The page I am living now is not numbered and I am not sure where I am up to in this story. A major plot twist has left me processing everything in a disjointed scattering of letters. None of the words I recognise are making sense in the way they are arranged. I am overwhelmed by a wave of emotion whenever I attempt to change anything.

I have been persevering on my own for so long, it is a different kind of existence in this familiar setting where I grew from. Returning, I am a character who has survived the author’s insistent tension, facing resistance like a mad professor testing out a brand new invention.

Today, sitting outdoors at a cafe in a bustling shopping centre arcade, a mint coloured mug full of a sweetened hot oat milk latte serves me a stillness to wonder about other characters around me, starring in their own narratives, as equally curious as mine. I am both anxious and humbled, as none of us can know anything more than our experiences have shown us to be true, until we arrive in our own versions of tomorrow.

Maybe we are always on a page unknown, and that is by design, to keep us growing at every turn and when we look back at what we learned, the book is written and ready to be reread, understanding where this present page fits, will be with the gift of time for a wiser perspective.

Until then, I believe our purpose is to do the best we can, as good exposition for the pages that follow on next, without reading too far ahead and without knowing how it ends. I consider that unknown inevitability, a blessing.