The F*uck-Up

I've written before about my total inability to fill out forms or address envelopes without completely losing my mind. Well, my POETRY contract came in the mail last week and there were a million pages of it and I about had a heart attack just looking at them, but Elegant Choice helped me fill them out and everything was finished and ready to go except I needed to write a little statement talking about my current project. Statements! Even more than forms they are my nemesis. Nevertheless, this afternoon I sat down, got my head as right as possible, and wrote:

I'm currently working on a series of poems about cartoons coming to life and saying metaphors to each other! Hence all the crayons. I also talk about pencils, pens, paint, and children having ink accidents all over their clean pockets.

That's as far as I got. I was then going to write something about the children getting in trouble with their daddies for coming home so inky, and how the whole series is Adults Only, but at that very moment the phone rang and it was my brother-in-law, calling to tell me that my father-in-law had just been rushed to the hospital, and we immediately started planning to leave tomorrow morning to see him and then I was rushing around like crazy doing laundry and putting the apartment in order, and by the time I got back to the POETRY thing I had totally lost my train of thought, and I said, "Just one more sentence, YOU CAN DO THIS," and then with blind determination I wrote the lamest sentence of all time:

It turns out if you stare at a cartoon long enough, it starts to look like a letter, or a bit of cursive, or an ampersand--like a figurative representation of something you could say, if you wanted to, and I guess I wanted to.

Oh no. Oh no no no no no no no. Needless to say I looked at it moments later and said OH MY GOD I NEED TO WIPE THAT SENTENCE OFF THE FACE OF THE PLANET. But how? It was already written down! I could photocopy the front side, or I could slather Liquid Paper everywhere--but no, that wouldn't work, and besides I need to send it off tomorrow morning before we leave. So I did the next best thing:

Here's the thing: I don't feel insane, but then something like this happens and I think, "If not me then who?"

Anyway, the situation with my father-in-law seems serious. I may be gone for a few days--not sure how long. I'll be in touch when I get back. In the meantime, I am THE WORST, I don't deserve to be in any magazine ever, and let's all pray that POETRY somehow neglects to flip that curséd sheet of paper o'er.