Carried: Quincy (Inflammation of tonsils)

Speech works normally until the subject becomes one's own needs, at which point it closes. The belief underneath is not that asking would fail but that asking is not permitted — that satisfaction of any kind has to be earned first, and the debt is never marked paid. The tonsils sit at the gate of the throat, where what wants to come out is checked before release. It was built by a household that ran on shame, where a child's request was treated as an offence. What the shape asks for is a request made without a justification attached.

I can ask for other people all day. For myself the words don't assemble.

Echo, able to return what others said and never to begin a sentence of her own. The form implies a task: to say one thing first, before anyone else has spoken.