Admit one.

Reading and talking writing from the inside out has been the business of my long day's journey into a fatigue setting in with its swift weighty way. Today's bosom companions: juxtaposition, multiperspectival narration, discernment, delineation, and, surprise of surprises, relineation and enjambment (the stealth, the heartsoar, the breathcatch, how the twenty-hour-old prose sketch becomes a shivery moonbeam beckoning over a line some false hand struck in the sand all those years ago, picks up a title, shakes out its embodiment, stands up as stanzas I could carry at my heart, little late valentine to myself this year).

Some days, like today, I overestimate my energy from first consciousness. I've never been great with long-term pacing. I am the sprinter: I swam dashes: the fast kid in the blue suit, off the blocks to anchor the free, to close distances, to go all out, blindedly, trying to pull more than my weight. Decades later, I am still learning how to be on a four-person team, not to need to do the whole relay myself.

When I was younger, my father handed me a ticket stub that said, "KEEP THIS COUPON." I looked at him, and he said, "Well, keep it." I prefer the other kind of ticket stub, the one that says, "ADMIT ONE." Well, admit one. I suspect you want to.