Dina is flat. Dina is unconvincing. She works at a salon. She does nails. She does hair. She stays on the page. Dead on the page. She does not come alive. Call her up, too. She came home a year ago, having failed just like you. Something in common. Finally, a subject. Manage a conversation again. I talked to her this afternoon. Had my assistant Deborah look her up in the phonebook, wasn’t difficult, settled the fiction vs. nonfiction question once and for all.
    She’s living in the basement where her brother used to live before the Marines went into Iraq, same telephone number. Get to know her again. Pacing. Broadway said no. Pacing, again. Never a singer, never a song. Take a bow. Take hers.
    Take hers to her.
    Visit your many graves, leave flowers. Mother, father.
    Cut up, your sentences. Make every comma, count.
    You know how to diagram? You know what they say about a period, placed well? Correctly.
    We suggest you stop trying to be someone you’re not. We suggest you make real true friends, not liars and wannabes. Your talent is for living. And don’t you call Deborah again (especially not at work, not during office hours)!
    Repeat, repeat after me. Dina, Dina.
Your Priestly is a bore. You’re a bore because you’re not the person you should be. The person you should have been should be married by now and have a real job. A career, even. Family. A car, cars, multiple insurances. Down with precarity. Enough with the scrimp. You should make money, you should spend it. Should be saving up at your age. Your book should begin on page 110. Second paragraph. One sentence in. Write a new conclusion. Take a new sheet of paper. Tear it out from the back of a notebook. Get off the computer, use a notebook, a pencil, a pen, hammer, axe.
    Write a new beginning.
    The middle suffers. The middle drags.
    Back home the snow should be melting by now. Melted.
    Put on your boots, your uncle’s, your father’s. Jump around in the slush. Spring. When the crystals lose their edges, their knives and pens’ tips and tongues, their elbows and shoulders. When mounds of snow become dull bubbles, wet. And when you step down and the ice doesn’t shatter but bursts and all around you your footprints fill up, overflow. A sheet of ice softened by boot into dew, a cold bed. Step and sleep better. “Dream piles of dreams.”
    Change Priestly’s name to something believable. More. Change something. More. New socks. Buy a plane ticket. Splurge. Minneapolis/St. Paul. Why am I being so kind to you? At such length? I grew up there myself. Tomorrow.