When Writers Cohabitate

I was in the kitchen, doing kitchen things, when that familiar voice called from down the hall, “I just used the penultimate Kleenex.”

Present facts? Check. Lay groundwork for escalating suspense and potential consequences for inaction? Check. Use big words? Check.

This is the Novelist’s Way. Never say “Hey, next time you’re at the store, buy some tissues” when you can instead say something like “I just used the penultimate Kleenex” and arrive at the same end.

My mind absorbed what had been said and what course of action was necessary, then began considering the possibilities created by the phrase ‘penultimate Kleenex’; that so blindly reached for to catch what you could not know was close to the final tear you would ever cry in this lifetime, the thing that holds the second to the last sorrow of the human heart.

This is the Poet’s Way. Needing to go to the grocery store to buy tissues is as much a part of the human condition as anything else, and should be immortalized in poetry as such.

This is what happens when writers cohabitate.

Or maybe it’s just us.