I'll try this once more.

Please: Do things. Don't tell me my tenses switched. I knew. I do watch. I will be paying attention. Please: Say hello. Longtime listener, firsttime caller. I write, I art. One tendrils into another, I forget the time, I forget to eat, I answer the phone and light the incense and 'round goes the globe. Sometimes it's poetry. Sometimes it's sci-fi. Mostly I don't use other peoples' peoples. I find it gauche. Fanfics in general feel cheap and thin like L'Eggs hosiery that runs the first time you wear it and going out the next day with clots of nail polish to stop the fraying you are thinking you need new shoes too, but the bills are due.

Look, readymade universe with laws and character and language, just slither in like an out-of-town businessman into a local whore. Use it for the night and be on your way. But then the burning starts and you can't get the residue off. More fanfics happen. Then it consumes you. Everyone back at home knows, you spend all your time in the bathroom taking antibiotics. Huge folders titled Character X Character. I don't go to those alleyways, but when I walk by I usually pause to watch the scufflings and gruntings that come from the dark crevices. All right, I read it. Sometimes, even, I shake off my Prada bag and admit I, too, carry a switchblade and a syringe.

I've been content all these years to lie in bed and just remember the worlds I experience, beyond the edges of the panels, behind the black bar in the theatre, and never write it to keep it alive, but damn. Now it's happened. If I can get out of this alive I'll consider it a lesson well-learned. Keep the blade sharp, my brothers. Don't let it rust in someone's neck.