Wednesday, April 1st, 2026

Black Writers Studio | Mid-Week Reflection

✍🏾 Eating the Elephant: On Rhythm and Returning to the Line

Dear Friend of the Page,

I can hear Chicago now, asking me,

“How do you eat an elephant?”

I would scrunch up my face and say what seemed obvious.

Elephants are far too majestic to be eaten.

And he would laugh.

Then, gently, like he was placing something in my hands that I would need later, he would say:

“If you decided to eat an elephant, you’d do it one piece at a time.”

These were his words every time I shared a dream too big to hold all at once.

Panoramic. Expansive. full of possibility.

He would always bring me back to the beginning.

And now, April has arrived.

A month that will not hold his encouragement in physical form.

A month where the silence answers back differently.

And still,

I am here with the page.

Still learning that writing, like grief, like love,

It is an act of returning.

One sentence.

One line.

One breath at a time.

---

On Rhythm

Before writing becomes structure,

before it becomes argument or narrative or form,

It is rhythm.

It is the way a sentence moves.

The way it lands.

The way it lingers.

You can feel when the rhythm is missing.

The sentence may be correct.

Even clear.

But it will not stay.

It will not root itself anywhere inside you.

---

Poetry Is the Binding

Poetry is not reserved for poems.

It is the ingredient that allows language to hold.

It is what makes a sentence stick to your bones instead of sliding past you.

You may not always have the language to name it,

But you know it when you encounter it.

It sounds like the truth spoken at the right pace.

It feels like breath placed exactly where it belongs.

It is the difference between:

“I am sad.”

and

“There is a quiet weight sitting inside my chest  that does not ask permission to stay.”

---

Creating Rhythm When You Feel Off Beat

Grief disrupts rhythm.

So does change.

So does beginning again.

Which means sometimes, the work is not to write well.

But to find your timing again.

---

Try this:

• Read your sentences out loud.

  Let your ear decide what your eyes cannot.

• Shorten what feels heavy.

  Lengthen what needs space.

• Follow breath instead of perfection.

  Where do you naturally pause? That is where the sentence lives.

• Let repetition hold you.

  Rhythm often returns through echo.

---

Re-Creating the Practice

You are not starting over.

You are returning differently.

There is a beat that belonged to who you were before.

And there is a flow that is emerging now, created by what you have lost,

and what you are learning to carry.

Both are true.

But only one can write this version of the story.

---

Mid-Week Reflection Quote

There are times when you have to see yourself whole and healthy, even when trauma tells a different story.

So today, Dear Friend,

Do not try to write the whole thing.

Do not try to solve the absence.

Sit with the line.

Listen for its rhythm.

And trust that even now,

especially now,

You are still eating the elephant

the only way it has ever been done,

one piece at a time.

We are Friends of the Page, and we write the work forward