like a cicada.

Sometimes I get high from writing papers.

Today is one of those days.

from “Goblin Market: A Ribald Classic,” Christina Rossetti, Playboy 20.9 (1973)

“Buy from us with a golden curl.”
She clipped a precious golden lock,
She dropped a tear more rare than pearl,
Then sucked their fruit globes fair or red:
Sweeter than honey from the rock,
Stronger than man-rejoicing wine, 
Clearer than water flowed that juice;
She never tasted such before,
How should it cloy with length of use?
She sucked and sucked and sucked the more
Fruits which that unknown orchard bore,
She sucked until her lips were sore;
Then flung the emptied rinds away,
But gathered up one kernel stone,
And knew not was it night or day
As she turned home alone.

There is a cicada, which is called the knife-grinder because it makes a noise just like a knife grinder’s wheel… from the Chamber’s Journal of Popular Literature Science and Arts, Volume XIII, 1860

In the black mountains of North Carolina, on a snowy day in January, there stood a girl from Tallahassee, with no love and a stuffy nose.