I want to say: don’t make yourself small. Then, the temptation to make your world bigger when it should be honed. Other people’s pain that will become stories. Pain to come. People picking things off you, and censorship (it’s not about you). (We will always make it about ourselves – that writer has seen behind the wall). We will only communicate through looks, and between the lines of books. Fatigued by faces the same and feeling much older than I am. Mostly I feel, I don’t need anything but words. And then. Moments of passion. In the city lost in thoughts and imagining, caught in my eye AC/DC shirts, a skinny man with melting ice cream, cigarette smell and a packet of home brand rice crackers (cheese flavour) sticking out of a baggy pocket. At first I imagined they were sweet biscuits. I’m trying to decide, if I made him up, which would be sadder? I understand the ego and the maintenance of a surface. The author on the stage that already told me in a book. I want to stick them all somewhere, with their fears (which are real). But somewhere where there aren’t roses in plastic tubes. You think you know me when you point that out. It makes you feel better. (It’s not about you). I’m receptive. Receiving. But selectively closed. Except between the lines of my fiction. Sometimes I wonder who I might lose. Loving is better. No one will tell me what to do. This moment is so extraordinary and so miniscule. And what shoulder, & what art | could twist the sinews of thy heart? This and nothing more.