I wish I were young and small enough to justify a temper tantrum.

My throat rasps roughly when I draw deep breaths.

I would like to stay at home and pick the crisp, curling strips of dried galia melon skin from between the keys of my keyboard. I want to watch Lolita again.

And then I would like to alphabetise something, and make fairy cakes with raspberry jam faces.

Ever since seeing Judith sprawled across the kitchen in her underwear last night, I have had an overwhelming urge to press my face into the terracotta tiles of our dining room floor, and have people step over and around me. Only I am not drunk.

(This might be a lie, I am not quite sure.)

I would also like to go back to bed, and not have to fill up my time with carefully measured out half-hour slots of (in)activity like

making bullet-point lists
or whispering French sweet nothings to myself in the forgotten top-floor corners of a university library I don’t belong to
or sticking yellow post-it notes to the slope of the ceiling above my bed, where they will fade in the sun and eventually rain down onto me as I sleep
or pushing indecipherable and half-hearted notes into plastic wallets whilst ignoring my father’s damning of the elusive essay condom.

Goddamn.