Rejection

There are stories wherein Stephen King pints all of his rejection letters onto a spike in his office, or Emily Dickinson writes and binds tomes of poems that mostly stay under her coffee table until after she’s dead. Usually people tell these stories because in the end Stephen King makes millions off movie adaptations and Emily Dickinson gets taught in high schools forever and ever —

but you have to assume that sometimes it doesn’t go that way. Sometimes the poems stay under the coffee table until your grandson throws them out, and your pile of rejection letters just gets bigger and bigger and bigger until you request that your body is stuffed with them when you die.

I wonder what really happens in these stories. Do you dry up, like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore — and then run? Do you stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over — like a syrupy sweet? Maybe you just sag like a heavy load? Or do you explode?