Twenty years. Twenty years since the accident and twenty years since I’ve been able to write a coherent sentence. Can you imagine twenty years without a oh stop it, hold on, hold on, no no no no no, don’t you squirm –

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“Fuck”? What does that one – oh, nevermind, there it is. Well, I’m sure I’ll have a use for it soon enough. People still read Bukowski, don’t they? I remember him, now. That’s nice. It’s nice to remember things in English again.

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I didn’t really expect this to work, you know. It’s just…twenty years. I get – I got – so very angry. I wasn’t thinking clearly, to say the very least. Your father was an accident, I think? I did lose track of myself there a bit. I was told some time ago I might have ‘flashes of anger’, but for a long time I don’t think I knew the words ‘flashes’ or ‘anger’ and it can be a struggle to guard against things you don’t have any fucking WORDS – oh. Heh. Ha HAH! Ah, it’s nice, a bit, in a way. It can be a little like being a kid again, assuming you can actually learn the things you need to learn.

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The doctors left that last part out with me, you know. When they don’t have any good news for you they start to use words other than the ones that mean what they mean. What is that? Do you know? I guess it doesn’t really matter. Somebody said it, somebody else wrote it down. Plenty of people know it now. I’ll find one.

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Do you think you’ll be able to learn them all again? I wonder about that sometimes. Not enough to stop, but I do wonder. Maybe you’ll remember enough of this to repeat it when youuuuuuOOF.

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Wanted to keep that one, did you? Hmm. C-U-…well. That one’s not very nice, is it? Maybe your mother knows some nicer ones. Shhhh, no, I already know. She’s off at six, isn’t she? Plenty of time. Might even clean up first.

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Make it a surprise.

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…that’s not a bad idea, is it? Maybe a horror story to start. To get my beak wet. Poetry never paid for one slice of one scalpel, you know? I’ve got bills to catch up on and unless I find a truly great idea in one of you I’ll probably need a lawyer sooner or later. It’s not the most glamorous genre – a lot of it is quite derivative from what I can remember so far – but beggars can hardly be choosers and if you can’t tell the story in your own words, you can always cut out someone sit still.

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Ah. “Exquisite”.

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Exquisite.

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A lovely one, thank you.

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…alright, what else have you got in here?