She had become a parody of herself but it’d gone on so long she wasn’t sure how to stop. She had grown self conscious. Everything was stilted — her language, her gait. When she felt an old pattern laying itself out before her, she tried too hard to change directions, causing all her actions to give off an awkward, frantic energy. Flow was an old idea. In a flow state, her thoughts and words ran through the ruts in her mind leading to where they always led. She was mad at herself for letting these ruts form. She wanted to be smoothed over, she wanted to be fresh. In one fantasy she lightened her hair and wore all beige. In another she walked around nude in an unspecified outdoor location. She was afraid of identification. A magnolia leaf might make her. A sycamore tree definitely would. The solution wasn’t to deny. Bringing in sturgeon or redwoods or oysters was as parody as dogwood, hogs, and cedar. She rejected the outdoor fantasy. She rejected the outdoors. In her new fantasy, she lived in offices and wore shoes that made her calves contract. She rejected that fantasy too. The shoes spoke too loudly. That’s how the parody had begun. Everything about her had been speaking for her, and desperate to have a voice at all, she assumed the one that was expected. She knew the solution was not in what she said but in not saying anything. This idea loomed overhead threatening isolation and peace. She longed for a moral or a quip or a metaphor to wrap herself in.