Five inks and a salt ring

The crying is the entry. I don't even know which part of it was the worst. I could write the smaller safer version — that I feel stuck, that I don't know my next draft, that the deadline Hye-jin keeps being polite about is real. I could write that one. But that's not why my face is swollen.

Hye-jin has been asking about the other ten pages since March. I know exactly how patient she is — I can hear her set her voice down like a wine glass. I sat in the tub with my knees up and listened to her ask if I'd written them yet, and I said I'm still in the room. That line now has eight copies in the notebook. Filed, mailed, walked out, walked in, walked out, still here, still here, still here. Five inks. Now a salt ring where my face landed against the page.

I keep telling people I'm in the middle of something. I'm in the middle of not having started. Those are different rooms. She knows. I hate that she knows and stays on the phone anyway.

I decided to call Yerin tomorrow. Not tonight. Tonight I'll sit and watch the swelling go down and look at my face one more time in the mirror, and the mirror won't care if I made any decisions today. It just shows me where the crying lives.