You asked me what I was doing now
What something I was using to fill the hours
“Still just writing,” I said
You are unsurprised

“The writer on herself”
It’s my latest mot du jour
Of course you’d say that all my writing’s about me, that I’m self-involved
and anyway ethnocentricity is unavoidable

I hate when you use big words that I have to Google.

You ask me don’t I ever get sick of it
The unslept nights, the hungry stomach
The constant sideways battle to edge the word between the lines
or into the small hours

I smile sadly and step back
And you nod and sigh.
And it finished, as it always did
with more words
and stupid questions.