It was 1980. I was writer-in-residence at a university. I had booked a meeting room for the first reading of a play. But three young men were dug in deep with each other. I became stiff and shrill. — 'Did you book this room? I booked this room!' —

Something replaced my mother. I knew it when I first saw them standing over the sink, their eyes glassed over like marbles. They looked the same, had the same dye job and thick fish-eye glasses. They sounded like her, even moved like her, my mother, somehow, but off. The night before, she’d left for dinner with her girlfriends, to drink wine and complain about husbands and come home so late the night became morning.

as in not an event but the unspooling as in not working from definitions a new state to declaim “ok, this is normal now”, but conscious of hollowing, the dark souls of sense data a wasp’s nest growing in the walls

I swing the axe onto the antique dining table, cracking it in two. One of the legs has been wobbling for a while now, so I pull it. Cursing, I check my finger. A long splinter is wedged just under my skin, the end still protruding. I tug at it gently, but it breaks off, leaving the rest submerged, its slender woody stalk visible despite the shadow of the late afternoon sky.