for as long as I can remember. I know this doesn’t make me special.

glad

is the colour of meconium, smells like the inside of a mask you have worn again and again. If I use this word in writing there is either a character limit I am forced to work around, or I’m being ironic. C.f.: I’m glad to hear — maybe, maybe not.

qualm

buttery, but thin velouté I used to make. They call them sunchokes here. I don’t like this word.

shame

oh god I hate this one, a sickly mint green like a hospital wall, in the room that you wake up in after thinking oh. oh. oh. With a smell like a wound gone over, once you catch the scent there it is under everything. Haven’t I had my share, more than my share sometimes? It tastes smug, if you can imagine such a thing, it tastes like someone saying well what did you think was going to happen? Of course I knew what would happen.

inat

red, like blood, and it tastes like it too, metallic, it throbs like the time my front tooth was smashed right out of my face. It tastes like when I got up, dazed. But I got up.