Microsoft Word tells me that this sentence is too long, that the “and” and the “and” and the “and” and the “and” that string together the primordial apple and Popes and Divine Right of Kings and castles and homes and fathers and sons and basements and the smell of Oreo cookies is bad style, that the details the details the details the details like a barrage of arrows, like the hacked-to-a-point logs of a palisade pounded into the soft earth of your ear or your groin or the jelly of your eye, that the basement and the board games and the shag rug on concrete and the shag rug rucked up by his knees and the shag rug rucked up by the struggle and the TV in the corner flickering cartoons and the smell of coffee and chatter above our heads and his weight and the button of his polo shirt and the fraying of his polo shirt collar and the smell of Oreos on his breath and his weight and his weight and his weight and his weight are the details, the trees that obscure the thing at the centre, the blank, the hole, that thing that roots me, that thing that bisected the perfect concentric rings of my life, that thing that I grew around like a tree around the power line that cuts through the pulp, that is strung on the poles of Popes and Divine Right and castles and homes and fathers and basements and boys will be boys and wives and families and jobs and retirement and gold watches and loving eulogies for such a great guy, that thing that made an agrammatical hole in my throat and Microsoft Word tells me that this sentence is too long and Microsoft Word saws it out of the white ground of the page with a serrated blue line and Microsoft Word tells me I should consider revising or I can ignore its wisdom once, just this once, just this once, just this once, just this one time.
Anna Spence (she/her) is an academic by day and a writer by compulsion. Her work appears in Ellipsis Zine, Emerge Literary Journal, Scissors & Spackle, and Elephants Never. She can be found on Twitter @MSSalieri.