structure under construction until it’s sufficiently far enough along to support itself, and also a word I’ll dive for like a forgotten bag of Doritos found during the day’s tenth cupboard-check every time. Cantilevers did away with the need for falsework, somehow. What happened to the falsework builders, whose lives were built upon the steady demand for falseworkmanship? What if your autobiographical novel is the falsework your cantilevered life doesn’t need? What if your life is the falsework you spend too much time dreaming a cantilever might magically come do away with so you can more efficiently get to the true work of your autobiographical novel, especially on weeks you have your kids, but even more on weeks you don’t? How would you be able to tell which was the falsework, life or novel, especially from your ground floor apartment’s unventilated bathroom at 9 p.m. as you pour over your phone like a librarian of bygone days might have combed a card catalog, saying, “cantilever, cantilever” involuntarily in your head, the ghost of a song you once knew just beyond the range of memory’s ear-drum, or imagination’s ear-drum—due to laziness or stress—like the middle-most span of a precarious crossing not yet laid down, placed by towering crane?
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