An author dies the first time

When her two-dollar worth of a noodles bowl gets downgraded to a one-dollar worth of gummy bar. The other half, like the other half of her, gets spent on a cheap leaking pen. It's maybe an investment of sorts, she says. It'll last.

But words that last are akin to the pretty gummy wrappers that collect below her desk, week after week. Pretty to look, pretty to stay on the edges of crinkled notebooks.

But there's little purpose to them other than to exist, but nothing exists forever.

Not even the author.