To this day, I have nightmares about arbitrary high school assignments that I am failing to finish on time.  You’d think, after nine years, that my subconscious would understand that I graduated high school; that my nightmares should now be about the completion of my novels dragging out way past some crucial publishing deadline (half good dream;-)  Nonetheless, homework dreams cling to my brain, just like they used to during school vacations.  They want me to wake up and panic.  The truly irritating thing is that panic still precedes relief.  I ask my dream-self: “Why must you care?  Why can’t you let the assignments be late so I can relax?”  Dream-self says: “I am teenage you and I wrote ‘Deadline Drama’ and I live forever in your nerdy poem, mmwaa ha ha ha…”

Your essay’s due tomorrow,

You haven’t even started,

Your words drag across the page

Long after day’s departed,

By midnight you’re not even

Half way through,

Your head is pounding,

What more can you do?

Tears fall in frustration,

Foreseeing a huge devastation,

You need to sleep,

You need to scream…

Then you wake up in the holidays

And find it’s all a dream!