Submission

“Damn, damn, damn, damn.” I'm pounding my head on my desk.

A red mark is appearing on my forehead. I can see the mark in my little mirror for checking hairs growing out of my nose and other absent-minded ablutions I perform when stuck between sentences.

The red mark is unexpected. I reach for a steroidal cream I use to ease the itch of spider bites. The little crawlers live in the kneehole of my desk. Periodically I try to vacuum up their eight-legged asses but they hide in the cable drop. The twisted wires must shape their twisted world view. They sneak out during my creative trances and bite me. Usually they die while biting. I smash them. Sometimes they manage to rappel down off me and run; live to bite another day.

“What is your problem?” says my wife from the kitchen, exasperated.

“I'm nowhere. Nowhere. I write this shit and I'm nowhere.”

“Why don't you wash our kitchen floor? You'll be somewhere. God knows maybe somewhere purposeful.”

“Purposeful? Where's God figure in? Recently I surmised the Argument of Unanswered Prayers to be part of my problem. No one is listening.”

“Maybe someone would listen, including me, if you washed the kitchen floor more often. Even if an answer to your prayers was coincidence. Action creates a confluence of coincidence.”

My wife had a large chest when we married. She has grown within our union to have a large mouth.

“Screw confluence and the spume it rode in under.” I say.

My wife huffs and heaves. I haven't won the argument but I have won a momentary frosty silence.

“Fine. Do what you want. Beating your head on the desk is not going to help you succeed as a writer.”

“Oh, thanks for the fucking critique Ms. Atwood. What might you suggest, all-knowing one?”

“You could try sending out an occasional manuscript.”

I have to admit; …it's a concept.