Not fit to print but not fit to burn, Deb's words 
spilled out like a torrent. It was a once-romantic 
text, at least in her esteem, but not in theirs. True, 
she has no data to back that up  no editor has named it 
abhorrent  but she senses there is a tedious flow to 
her paragraphs (which speak on their own behalf, 
'There'll be no need for autographs'). Proud fiction 
which fell from her fingertips, that prose is inert now 
and dormant. Her characters move without motives and 
they lack in sympathy. She took her fingers then off 
the keys and went to sit by the floor vent. She rested 
her head on the hardwood, right on the dirty floor, and 
watched as the clock struck four. The chimes, they did 
not ignore her. She crawled to the window to look 
outside and stopped to wonder what the war meant for 
the people who passed on the street below, were their 
voices fleshed out. She moved all the dead fruit into a 
row on the sill at her home in the Sunset and picked up 
her palette as the thought came: 'I lead a lonely 
life.' She paints, with a putty knife, a Californian 
still life. At home, far away, she would have found a 
way to transcend the bittersweetness of and the dead-
beatness of this feeling. Magnetic poetry was astray on 
the floor. She knew she wrote enough today. Her 
typewriting hands are sore cause her words ignore their 
meanings. At night with her paints and her pens at 
rest, she still doubted but tried to ignore it. From 
her bed she reached and turned the last lamp off in her 
tranquil room. When dawn came she'd rise and she'd 
write some more, but for now she would rest the 
discordant voices in her head while she listened to the 
breeze hit the drapes. That wind travelled three blocks 
from the frigid beach to her there in her third floor 
apartment. As she drifted she reminded herself not to 
doubt all the love she'd poured out down by the western 
shore. At least the ocean did not ignore her.