As a different approach, let me ask, what would you like from this exchange? What would you like to do better as a writer? What would you like t be recognized for?
What are your strengths and weaknesses? Thanks, chuck
To be embarrassingly honest, you’ve been a huge influence on me and my writing. I’ve already learned a lot from you. It’s difficult to put into words, but I really admire the non-conventional storytelling. The jumping between scenes, non-linear timelines, etc. Slowly unfolding details that build a picture rather than explaining everything in a straightforward manner. That would be something I’d like to hone. Stories that have a cathartic arc despite not being narratively straightforward beginning-middle-end structures. If any of that makes sense.
I think of literature as the space for us to have conversations we can’t have face to face. I feel like your work has given me permission to be human, and that’s something I’d like to achieve with my own work. That’s what I’d like to be recognised for: being uncomfortably honest about the human experience, breaking through socially comfortable narratives.
As for my strengths and weaknesses (I assume you mean in my writing). I’d say my strengths are voice, characterisation, affect. I’ve been praised for being “visceral”, “raw”, making people “feel” my words (I’ve also received some vitriolic hate for the same reason). Weaknesses… well, as you’ve already noticed in this story, and I’ve observed in my other work as well, I have a tendency to “tell” instead of “show”. I tend to flat out state my points instead of letting the story sit for itself.
What I want from this exchange… difficult to say specifically. I’m just curious to hear your feedback since I’d like my work to punch souls like yours has punched mine.
Excellent! Please consider that your opening with the visceral details is the strongest part (for me). And the object you establish is the socks the narrator intends to take. Whether it's the socks or a scar, something like that would be a good object to return to throughout. Perhaps the panties?
The solid, brutal visceral details could return -- in a sense -- with equally visceral on-the-body details of the older guide, but those would be details of pleasure.
Thank you for giving me such a clear idea of your goals. They are the ideals I strive for myself (fuck the linear story).
FYi, I was fascinated by the mention of the next patient going in, and I wondered if that beat couldn't serve a larger purpose. Thus you'd have the med tech, the fellow patient, and the guide. The narrator could use the next patient as a foil to whom to say some brutal truths.
Oh! I’ve figured something out! Rather than have the other examples (when you were 14, when you were 16, etc) just named in passing like that, I could cut to them throughout the story.
I can definitely see the socks/panties as a haunting object. And I think adding visceral body details would actually be really great in embodying the shame/terror/whatever that the protagonist is feeling throughout the story. I’ll think about what I can do with the other patient 🤔
If it helps, please consider the essay we've discussed: "A Tale of Fashion." It uses the mumu and its history as the way into the author's story of being raped. It begins so benignly and turns dark quickly, the mumu being what the police give you to wear home after your clothes are seized as evidence. The ending explodes with courage and strength as the author proposes that the police/hospital should give victims a Cinderella make-up and send them home transformed, not shamed in a shapeless mumu dress. The socks and panties might serve a similar function.
I can't find a link to the essay/story, but perhaps someone on Substack can. We've had a link in the past.
Would you be okay with me posting our exchange tomorrow? Even if we're at loggerheads, that's still a worthwhile point for folks to see. Your story is very strong, and I admire the way you stand up for it. chuck
This is such an interesting angle to consider about house calls. There’s a balance to strike between the author still having “their” story and also gobbling up every piece of feedback that comes from the interaction so they become a better writer. You’re THE Chuck Palahniuk, not to fanboy (though I expect most of us do that from time to time when considering your accessibility here), which brings with it this…pressure, maybe…to adopt every idea. None of that pressure comes from you - on the contrary, you’re very much in the “what do you think about this approach?” neighborhood - but instead it’s self-imposed by the writers because of our respect and admiration for who you are. I went through that balancing act - wanting to make the story better while also holding onto what made it mine in the first place - a couple years ago during a “Gloves Off” exercise. I came out of it with a much stronger story and a (still growing) list of techniques to employ, while also being able to read “Swimmers v2.0” and recognize it as my own. Which I suppose is the goal here.
Have you dropped out? If this is a bad time for you, please let me know. If this is a difficult story for you, or I've made suggestions that don't jibe with your vision, please let me know. Thanks, chuck
Sorry! I was just taking some time to reflect on your suggestions.
To be honest, I think the opening question of “who would you like to be” would, for lack of a better way, basic-ify the story. It would seem more predictable, more paint-by-numbers — for my taste, at least. It makes the story a neat straightforward arc of “oh it all comes full circle at the end” but in a way that I feel distracts (I’ll explain below). As for the scar suggestion, I did thinking about that. Inserting a childhood memory at the start, some experience that teaches her to internalise shame as she does in the story, some origin of the scar, and then showing her again at 40 now comfortable with the scar, showing she’s comfortable with herself. But would that not be quite on the nose?
I think what’s powerful about this story is that it opens with something as political, charged, and controversial as abortion. But it refuses to be a story about abortion. It’s a story about shame, insecurity, inner growth through overcoming. But that rawness of the abortion, the vulnerability, etc. should be felt. The goal is to create an affect in the reader that carries through the story. The reader should feel the healing alongside her. That’s why it’s told as “you”. And I just feel like overdoing it on the thematic language would be, I’m sorry to say, cheesy. And make the piece more like a writing trying to be writing, than writing trying to disappear.
Not to be ungrateful for your suggestions! I appreciate the time you’re giving me greatly. Truly, thank you.
Thank you for steering me toward a better intention. My greatest concern is that so much of the transformation happens in dialog (or implied dialog). The transformation is somewhat declared, so I'll push for it to be shown/depicted. I'm sorry if I'm mechanistic.
You've chosen not to put anything except "culture" in quotation marks. Consider putting the Needle Guy's ask in quotation marks. For example: "Who would you like to be in twenty years?"
This would set up the older guide. And because it's the only bit in quotation, it would land harder and might seem like the last real moment in the dreaminess.
Consider that for the older/advising self, giving this comfort is a sort-of "victory lap." She's survived so many trials, and that proves her ability. Sure, she can drink wine, but it would be interesting to see the older self demonstrate her hard-won success. What would help cast her as a victor?
To be honest, I see it as the stability suggested by the domesticity. The wine, the living room, the having a night in by herself at home. Like that comfort with herself. This is her home, her “domain”. It contrasts with that unstable, deteriorating, anxious version of herself at 22. I guess I could hammer home those details. But I don’t really want to “represent” her victory through anything else because the whole point is that it’s an internal victory. If I do add a New York memory segment, it could circle back. Like not this but as an example: a tumultuous hoarding home in childhood, a nice clean minimalist living room now.
Ah, how to make the internal external? One option is to truly unpack the older self's appearance. And, since she and the narrator are the same person, give the narrator the ability to feel the on-the-body sense of the older guide.
The goal is to provide the clues that make the reader feel the qualities -- without you having to dictate them with conceptual language. That will take some deep reflection: What will signify happiness, peace, success to the younger narrator?
It could be the guide no longer hiding certain scars, but openly allowing them to show.
"Your therapist kept telling you that you have to be your adult..."
It reminds me a little of the older, future "Tony" saving his younger self in "The Shining," but you can work it very differently. That idea of the bolder "better self" or Tyler Durden counseling the confused younger self is very appealing. Because the narrator lapses in and out of awareness during her recovery, consider introducing the older self there.
Your idea also riffs with "Sibyl" and "Session 9" but you put that "How To Make An American Quilt" twist on it; i.e., the older advisor schooling the younger person. That's fresh and new. Very appealing.
This struck me as interesting. First, you state the situation using high conceptual language...
"...feel scared now, but you know you have to breathe stable for an operation, so you stare at the ceiling and summon your dissociative abilities. You don’t know this yet, but this dislodges the experience from your timeline and the luminescent surgery room becomes not a memory but a place, a permanent room in your mind with a gaping opening, ready to take you right back."
Then, you stay in scene and do almost the same task:
"...He asks you where you’d like to go, the man infusing you. You panic and say, New York in the 2000s. He chuckles at your answer and says something you won’t remember."
When you use physical specifics -- a trip to NYC in the 2000s, a rat chewing a wooden house -- I have a much easier time staying with the story. The dialog with the medical tech seems like such a perfect set-up, a portal, to an embedded story -- just like Tobias Wolff would do in "Bullet in the Brain" or "Leviathan." The instant the narrator mentioned a specific time/place, I expected the story to veer there eventually. You've created such an unusual/gripping set-up, did you originally have an anecdote set in that time/place?
To be honest, it’s a bit of autofiction. When I got my abortion, I was going through a bit of a ‘90s/‘00s phase and replied “New York in the 2000s”. I did spend a year in New York in the 2000s, as a kid. I suppose the story could transition to a childhood memory — not one of mine, but one that would be relevant to the story’s themes somehow. It could “fill the time” between passing out and waking up. Or it might distract. 🤷
Hey, thank you for this. Is this about having a hysterectomy or is it meant to be ambiguous? I am sorry if I haven't quite figured that out. I really resonate with this aspect of your older self, talking to your younger self. It's lovely really. I reckon you could really play into the womanhood aspects, almost like a mother daughter. I also really loved the descriptions on awaking from anaesthesia - over and over and over again. Also loved the repetition of and then you just leave, and then you just leave. I also read it almost as if the whole incident was taking place whilst she was coming back out of anaesthesia... and then when she just leaves, she makes a mental note to get wine drunk and stare out a window when she's 40! Loved it thank you !
Ah yes - sorry I can see that now in the subtitle -- and I've gone and re-read with that lens. Apologies for misinterpreting! It's so sad, I love the framing of a younger 22 year old, interacting with her 40 year old self in the future.
Barbara I was really excited to read this because there’s so many different experiences of abortion and ways to process and ultimately feel about it as well. Thanks for sharing!
My favorite part were the rat metaphor and taking home the socks. The socks especially made me feel a lot. You don’t get any other souvenirs.
Not everyone chooses to be sedated for an abortion, so it was interesting to read about the guy taking her on a trip and her picking one she regrets. Some
Levity during what people consider a dark moment. I loved the mix of so many emotions.
I was surprised she didn’t observe more people in the waiting room or around her. Just the male nurse. Room for more camera like details instead of inside thoughts?
My only feedback was going to be what I already saw you mention to chuck in your strengths and weaknesses. There’s a lot of telling about feelings and the end sort of feels like a personal essay instead of story. Or even personal recollection from therapy feels a lot like telling someone a dream you had. If this is personal recollection, Maybe you tell this story again and again until it becomes more distant from your own experience and in the fictionalization somehow becomes more relatable and real? (Presuming this is auto fiction which you absolutely don’t and shouldn’t have to confirm) some of the details feel so specific they don’t ring as true to me, and I remember Chuck talking about this in his writing craft novel… I just don’t remember what he called it. But it helped me start writing more about the themes and less about my personal details and therefore had more “fun” with fictionalization in some of my writings and by being less specific to your reality they become more widely acceptable? Obviously he explains it better lol.
Oh and I LOVE the time travel piece. Like crossing paths wth the self. I think you could go more into action with that. What if they find each other at a bar and have a conversation instead of all the cerebral reflection?
I really enjoyed reading this. Thanks for sharing!
ahh, the second-person point of view is unsettling and so right for this story, Barbara. it contributes to the mystifying feeling of coming out of anesthesia and shoves the reader into the same milky-headed, shifting world as the "you" in the story. very nice. and damn, if the story as a whole isn't devastating. we get hints of trauma over the prior 22 years, but not specific details of what the trauma entailed (though it's clear the procedure is an abortion) - which could make it feel even more painful. and yet, you manage to leave the reader with a sense of the storm clearing at the end of the story. yes, there's damage and grief and self-doubt, but also maybe...just maybe...the "you" is going to be ok.
gorgeous lines abound, but phrases and sentences I adored:
- "They have buttons in hospitals"
- "You can get a hint, read a hospital room"
- "spaghetti perception"
- "picking at the fog"
Repetition of the line "And then you just leave" is excellent, but would you consider shortening the second one to "You just leave"? Maybe I don't have the skill to explain WHY that feels better to me, but it does. Sure, it eliminates three sentences in a row starting with "and," but perhaps the shortened version as the repetition hits more like a hammer.
Comment #5 --
As a different approach, let me ask, what would you like from this exchange? What would you like to do better as a writer? What would you like t be recognized for?
What are your strengths and weaknesses? Thanks, chuck
To be embarrassingly honest, you’ve been a huge influence on me and my writing. I’ve already learned a lot from you. It’s difficult to put into words, but I really admire the non-conventional storytelling. The jumping between scenes, non-linear timelines, etc. Slowly unfolding details that build a picture rather than explaining everything in a straightforward manner. That would be something I’d like to hone. Stories that have a cathartic arc despite not being narratively straightforward beginning-middle-end structures. If any of that makes sense.
I think of literature as the space for us to have conversations we can’t have face to face. I feel like your work has given me permission to be human, and that’s something I’d like to achieve with my own work. That’s what I’d like to be recognised for: being uncomfortably honest about the human experience, breaking through socially comfortable narratives.
As for my strengths and weaknesses (I assume you mean in my writing). I’d say my strengths are voice, characterisation, affect. I’ve been praised for being “visceral”, “raw”, making people “feel” my words (I’ve also received some vitriolic hate for the same reason). Weaknesses… well, as you’ve already noticed in this story, and I’ve observed in my other work as well, I have a tendency to “tell” instead of “show”. I tend to flat out state my points instead of letting the story sit for itself.
What I want from this exchange… difficult to say specifically. I’m just curious to hear your feedback since I’d like my work to punch souls like yours has punched mine.
Excellent! Please consider that your opening with the visceral details is the strongest part (for me). And the object you establish is the socks the narrator intends to take. Whether it's the socks or a scar, something like that would be a good object to return to throughout. Perhaps the panties?
The solid, brutal visceral details could return -- in a sense -- with equally visceral on-the-body details of the older guide, but those would be details of pleasure.
Thank you for giving me such a clear idea of your goals. They are the ideals I strive for myself (fuck the linear story).
FYi, I was fascinated by the mention of the next patient going in, and I wondered if that beat couldn't serve a larger purpose. Thus you'd have the med tech, the fellow patient, and the guide. The narrator could use the next patient as a foil to whom to say some brutal truths.
Oh! I’ve figured something out! Rather than have the other examples (when you were 14, when you were 16, etc) just named in passing like that, I could cut to them throughout the story.
I can definitely see the socks/panties as a haunting object. And I think adding visceral body details would actually be really great in embodying the shame/terror/whatever that the protagonist is feeling throughout the story. I’ll think about what I can do with the other patient 🤔
If it helps, please consider the essay we've discussed: "A Tale of Fashion." It uses the mumu and its history as the way into the author's story of being raped. It begins so benignly and turns dark quickly, the mumu being what the police give you to wear home after your clothes are seized as evidence. The ending explodes with courage and strength as the author proposes that the police/hospital should give victims a Cinderella make-up and send them home transformed, not shamed in a shapeless mumu dress. The socks and panties might serve a similar function.
I can't find a link to the essay/story, but perhaps someone on Substack can. We've had a link in the past.
And, yes, I support the changes you've suggested.
Oh, that’s a great piece to take inspiration from! Thanks for the suggestion, I’ll look for it.
FYI, your Reply Rules cracked me up. I've never seen that function.
Absolutely harrowing. Great work. Little speechless if I’m honest.
🥹🥹 thank you
wow! i feel like i'm crying with you. thank you!
Very well done, dear.
Bravo.
Hello Barbara --
Would you be okay with me posting our exchange tomorrow? Even if we're at loggerheads, that's still a worthwhile point for folks to see. Your story is very strong, and I admire the way you stand up for it. chuck
Thank you, and I appreciate the time you’ve given me nevertheless. I don’t mind you posting our exchange :)
Wonderful. If you would, please take a look at Comment #5. I think I've botched this House Call and would like to hone my approach in the future.
It’s not for naught, I can definitely start a lot with the feedback you’ve given me already :)
This is such an interesting angle to consider about house calls. There’s a balance to strike between the author still having “their” story and also gobbling up every piece of feedback that comes from the interaction so they become a better writer. You’re THE Chuck Palahniuk, not to fanboy (though I expect most of us do that from time to time when considering your accessibility here), which brings with it this…pressure, maybe…to adopt every idea. None of that pressure comes from you - on the contrary, you’re very much in the “what do you think about this approach?” neighborhood - but instead it’s self-imposed by the writers because of our respect and admiration for who you are. I went through that balancing act - wanting to make the story better while also holding onto what made it mine in the first place - a couple years ago during a “Gloves Off” exercise. I came out of it with a much stronger story and a (still growing) list of techniques to employ, while also being able to read “Swimmers v2.0” and recognize it as my own. Which I suppose is the goal here.
Hello Barbara --
Have you dropped out? If this is a bad time for you, please let me know. If this is a difficult story for you, or I've made suggestions that don't jibe with your vision, please let me know. Thanks, chuck
Sorry! I was just taking some time to reflect on your suggestions.
To be honest, I think the opening question of “who would you like to be” would, for lack of a better way, basic-ify the story. It would seem more predictable, more paint-by-numbers — for my taste, at least. It makes the story a neat straightforward arc of “oh it all comes full circle at the end” but in a way that I feel distracts (I’ll explain below). As for the scar suggestion, I did thinking about that. Inserting a childhood memory at the start, some experience that teaches her to internalise shame as she does in the story, some origin of the scar, and then showing her again at 40 now comfortable with the scar, showing she’s comfortable with herself. But would that not be quite on the nose?
I think what’s powerful about this story is that it opens with something as political, charged, and controversial as abortion. But it refuses to be a story about abortion. It’s a story about shame, insecurity, inner growth through overcoming. But that rawness of the abortion, the vulnerability, etc. should be felt. The goal is to create an affect in the reader that carries through the story. The reader should feel the healing alongside her. That’s why it’s told as “you”. And I just feel like overdoing it on the thematic language would be, I’m sorry to say, cheesy. And make the piece more like a writing trying to be writing, than writing trying to disappear.
Not to be ungrateful for your suggestions! I appreciate the time you’re giving me greatly. Truly, thank you.
Thank you for steering me toward a better intention. My greatest concern is that so much of the transformation happens in dialog (or implied dialog). The transformation is somewhat declared, so I'll push for it to be shown/depicted. I'm sorry if I'm mechanistic.
No that makes sense. I definitely see how I could move from “tell” to “show” so to speak.
Comment #4 --
You've chosen not to put anything except "culture" in quotation marks. Consider putting the Needle Guy's ask in quotation marks. For example: "Who would you like to be in twenty years?"
This would set up the older guide. And because it's the only bit in quotation, it would land harder and might seem like the last real moment in the dreaminess.
You've got to do what your heart wants.
Comment #3 --
Consider that for the older/advising self, giving this comfort is a sort-of "victory lap." She's survived so many trials, and that proves her ability. Sure, she can drink wine, but it would be interesting to see the older self demonstrate her hard-won success. What would help cast her as a victor?
To be honest, I see it as the stability suggested by the domesticity. The wine, the living room, the having a night in by herself at home. Like that comfort with herself. This is her home, her “domain”. It contrasts with that unstable, deteriorating, anxious version of herself at 22. I guess I could hammer home those details. But I don’t really want to “represent” her victory through anything else because the whole point is that it’s an internal victory. If I do add a New York memory segment, it could circle back. Like not this but as an example: a tumultuous hoarding home in childhood, a nice clean minimalist living room now.
Ah, how to make the internal external? One option is to truly unpack the older self's appearance. And, since she and the narrator are the same person, give the narrator the ability to feel the on-the-body sense of the older guide.
The goal is to provide the clues that make the reader feel the qualities -- without you having to dictate them with conceptual language. That will take some deep reflection: What will signify happiness, peace, success to the younger narrator?
It could be the guide no longer hiding certain scars, but openly allowing them to show.
Comment #2 --
This idea I loved:
"Your therapist kept telling you that you have to be your adult..."
It reminds me a little of the older, future "Tony" saving his younger self in "The Shining," but you can work it very differently. That idea of the bolder "better self" or Tyler Durden counseling the confused younger self is very appealing. Because the narrator lapses in and out of awareness during her recovery, consider introducing the older self there.
Your idea also riffs with "Sibyl" and "Session 9" but you put that "How To Make An American Quilt" twist on it; i.e., the older advisor schooling the younger person. That's fresh and new. Very appealing.
Comment #1 --
This struck me as interesting. First, you state the situation using high conceptual language...
"...feel scared now, but you know you have to breathe stable for an operation, so you stare at the ceiling and summon your dissociative abilities. You don’t know this yet, but this dislodges the experience from your timeline and the luminescent surgery room becomes not a memory but a place, a permanent room in your mind with a gaping opening, ready to take you right back."
Then, you stay in scene and do almost the same task:
"...He asks you where you’d like to go, the man infusing you. You panic and say, New York in the 2000s. He chuckles at your answer and says something you won’t remember."
When you use physical specifics -- a trip to NYC in the 2000s, a rat chewing a wooden house -- I have a much easier time staying with the story. The dialog with the medical tech seems like such a perfect set-up, a portal, to an embedded story -- just like Tobias Wolff would do in "Bullet in the Brain" or "Leviathan." The instant the narrator mentioned a specific time/place, I expected the story to veer there eventually. You've created such an unusual/gripping set-up, did you originally have an anecdote set in that time/place?
To be honest, it’s a bit of autofiction. When I got my abortion, I was going through a bit of a ‘90s/‘00s phase and replied “New York in the 2000s”. I did spend a year in New York in the 2000s, as a kid. I suppose the story could transition to a childhood memory — not one of mine, but one that would be relevant to the story’s themes somehow. It could “fill the time” between passing out and waking up. Or it might distract. 🤷
Or it might be the ultimate pay-off told at the end of the story. It is set up so nicely.
Hello Barbara --
Would you be okay with a House Call this week? We'll have fun. chuck
I’d be honoured :)
Great! You're fast on the draw, too! Please let me read and reread for a day or two, then I'll come back. chuck
Hey, thank you for this. Is this about having a hysterectomy or is it meant to be ambiguous? I am sorry if I haven't quite figured that out. I really resonate with this aspect of your older self, talking to your younger self. It's lovely really. I reckon you could really play into the womanhood aspects, almost like a mother daughter. I also really loved the descriptions on awaking from anaesthesia - over and over and over again. Also loved the repetition of and then you just leave, and then you just leave. I also read it almost as if the whole incident was taking place whilst she was coming back out of anaesthesia... and then when she just leaves, she makes a mental note to get wine drunk and stare out a window when she's 40! Loved it thank you !
Hi thank you so much for you comment :) it’s actually about an abortion
Ah yes - sorry I can see that now in the subtitle -- and I've gone and re-read with that lens. Apologies for misinterpreting! It's so sad, I love the framing of a younger 22 year old, interacting with her 40 year old self in the future.
i absolutely loved this
Barbara I was really excited to read this because there’s so many different experiences of abortion and ways to process and ultimately feel about it as well. Thanks for sharing!
My favorite part were the rat metaphor and taking home the socks. The socks especially made me feel a lot. You don’t get any other souvenirs.
Not everyone chooses to be sedated for an abortion, so it was interesting to read about the guy taking her on a trip and her picking one she regrets. Some
Levity during what people consider a dark moment. I loved the mix of so many emotions.
I was surprised she didn’t observe more people in the waiting room or around her. Just the male nurse. Room for more camera like details instead of inside thoughts?
My only feedback was going to be what I already saw you mention to chuck in your strengths and weaknesses. There’s a lot of telling about feelings and the end sort of feels like a personal essay instead of story. Or even personal recollection from therapy feels a lot like telling someone a dream you had. If this is personal recollection, Maybe you tell this story again and again until it becomes more distant from your own experience and in the fictionalization somehow becomes more relatable and real? (Presuming this is auto fiction which you absolutely don’t and shouldn’t have to confirm) some of the details feel so specific they don’t ring as true to me, and I remember Chuck talking about this in his writing craft novel… I just don’t remember what he called it. But it helped me start writing more about the themes and less about my personal details and therefore had more “fun” with fictionalization in some of my writings and by being less specific to your reality they become more widely acceptable? Obviously he explains it better lol.
Oh and I LOVE the time travel piece. Like crossing paths wth the self. I think you could go more into action with that. What if they find each other at a bar and have a conversation instead of all the cerebral reflection?
I really enjoyed reading this. Thanks for sharing!
ahh, the second-person point of view is unsettling and so right for this story, Barbara. it contributes to the mystifying feeling of coming out of anesthesia and shoves the reader into the same milky-headed, shifting world as the "you" in the story. very nice. and damn, if the story as a whole isn't devastating. we get hints of trauma over the prior 22 years, but not specific details of what the trauma entailed (though it's clear the procedure is an abortion) - which could make it feel even more painful. and yet, you manage to leave the reader with a sense of the storm clearing at the end of the story. yes, there's damage and grief and self-doubt, but also maybe...just maybe...the "you" is going to be ok.
gorgeous lines abound, but phrases and sentences I adored:
- "They have buttons in hospitals"
- "You can get a hint, read a hospital room"
- "spaghetti perception"
- "picking at the fog"
Repetition of the line "And then you just leave" is excellent, but would you consider shortening the second one to "You just leave"? Maybe I don't have the skill to explain WHY that feels better to me, but it does. Sure, it eliminates three sentences in a row starting with "and," but perhaps the shortened version as the repetition hits more like a hammer.