You take a place at the big table at Lily Lane, looking out the tall bay windows at birds and trees against clear skies. Does peace feel something like this? Often, you disbelieve the wild reality of being here at this university—and to write. One version of you would never have dreamt this; this version is grateful to the one that did.

Emma has brought in clementines which sit at the centre of the table. There’s enough to go around the fifteen of you present. Now hands have broken into a dance of distribution, crossing over each other to either claim or offer the fruit. Something about rings on fingers makes art of the everyday, makes a reverent aesthete of you, drifting through the museums of people’s portrayals of self. There must be twenty-three rings here.

Jewellery in tow, Josie strips her fruit in one spiralling motion, and part of you wants to stack the snaking skin neatly back into place. Meanwhile, Mark makes a pregnant lotus bloom and then eats its baby. Sarah takes the top half of the rind clean off and uses the bottom half as a bowl. Erica shreds the covering into tiny untidy bits, and you want to stand up and ask her what hurt her, but Jade is discussing Sappho, and now is always the wrong time.

Still, it is fascinating how no two people peel their clementines in quite the same way. But when did you learn to fill yourself so, from watching others eat? You simply twiddle the cap of your pen to keep from forgetting you are real.