*Exhale*

It’s never a glamorous moment. There is usually a watery highball glass that needs refreshing awash in a pool of its own sweat sitting next to an ashtray full of butts. Your desk is strewn with a smattering of papers; like a dried up mound of pallid, brittle leaves that have to be swept into a dust bin at the end of autumn. When you finally finish your writing, it is 3:04 am, your right eye is twitching, the lumbar region of your back is tied in a knot of tension, and the cat is splayed across the desk chair you have since forsaken for the general placation of your bed. You are alone; without triumph or fanfare.

At this very moment you’re curious what the next step is. The words oozed out of your fingertips seconds earlier, but now there is no friendly tapping. Everything has finally culminated in a lexis of claims, still fresh. If only there was more of a glowing essence housed within this second of completion; maybe an epic illumination that would at least show in your cat’s droopy eyes or a miniscule rainbow that suddenly shoots out of the dripping glass. No such luck. This is the flash of time that you have been waiting for the past three years, yet this very moment in which you’ve closed down shop on the printing press to your soul can almost certainly be described as a dud.