Screaming baby

Esmee is screaming, screaming, screaming because she has decided that she wants to brush her teeth all day every day. TEEEEEETH! TEEEEEETH! Good lord, I never thought oral hygiene would be the source of a tantrum.

I have almost 20,000 words of the new book which is nothing short of a miracle what with all the racket here.

TEEEEEEETH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Here's another passage from my madness:

This is Tara.

She is a box. She is a dirty, wet box I found in my parents’ basement. The picture on the outside is supposed to show us what’s inside, but the picture is destroyed by water. It’s too damaged to tell what’s supposed to be inside. But inside. Inside there are beautiful things. Trinkets. Scraps of paper with beautiful words. Shimmering things, loose glitter.

She is the girl who smeared her ear wax on the white headboard behind her bed.

She is a coy animal, playing like a child and then biting. Rabid.

She is the girl who pressed her finger so deep into my belly button, I felt like she was touching the inside of me. The girl who wouldn’t stop until I was crying.

She is the shimmering scales of a dead fish washed ashore.

She is a word. A series of words, each one with more syllables than the last. She is a villanelle. A sestina. A haiku. She is a raunchy limerick. She is the tumbling line that falls off the page. I have made her this, done this to her, because keeping her inside the margins of a piece of paper, inside the pages of a book is the only way I know how to keep her safe.