Extension Request

Dear Professor / I hope you are well / I hope you are splendid / I hope you are in whichever headspace permits you to accept my humble extension request / I hope that your kids are getting good grades / that your oatmeal is plentiful with berries / that the 5K you ran over the weekend contributed to the noble cause of breast cancer research / that your breath still sways in and out as steady as a crib / even when you are insurmountably / cataclysmically sad / or angry or scared / or unable to write 

The truth is my grandmother died / my home crumbled in a terrible fire / followed by an even more terrible tsunami / my best friend literally stabbed me in the back / three cars hit me at once / and then each other / the truth is I had a bad day / a bad week / the truth is under the given conditions / I do not have the tenacity of rubber bands / but rather the brittle collapse of dry spaghetti / the endurance of a bubble 

The truth is / my dog ate my paper / or at least / something gnawed / undid / it into indiscrete ideas / which meander sheep-like behind vague fog / or maybe my paper was never formed / still caught as an embryo / pushing at my abdomen / the way nausea teases at catharsis

Sometimes under pressure / I find there are no more ideas to reap / no more sentences to forge / no more takes to give / everything that I have thought and ever will think / has been thought / I have dreamed / of the things I could one day think / and still / I write to you on the brink of a shapeless great precipice / I am certain that any day now / a thought will be born from me / fluttering / alert / attuned to the world and its many granular inflections