Now I am at the point in the writing process where the deadline feels larger than me and I am counting the hours I have left to organise myself and my sources into some kind of sense. Any hope of creative expression or passion or integrity at this point is so weak as to be barely there and I’m discouraged, achy, irritable, and clumsy. Sentences hate me. My vocabulary snuck off. My patience regressed into a closet tantrum

(actual closet, still off-gassing fresh paint fumes, strange semi-gloss green for the colour of trim in fact called moss, same room in which movie nightmares disabled sleep, last room at my mother’s before I moved out, actual tantrum, remembered, scarring, iconic, mythically transformative, live

these creatures slip under doorways and snicker snacker toward my unhelpful kicking feet as I writhe at the screen).

Patience is a suicidal teenager ignorant of irony, the thought of a poisoned flower, cold fingers after a hair on the tongue for an hour, gagging.