"Your twin cinema's a little underfed," states the vet quite matter-of-factly, looking quite nonplussed at your furrowed brows and red face. "See here," he says, "the fur's stripping off its sides, and even its spine is showing through!"

"That's just the vertical line break," you pout, running your hands over your pet's sides. It purrs from deep within, the sound of well-oiled enjambments rubbing against each other. "She's always been rather brief, ever since I adopted her from a litter of abandoned drafts in SingPoWriMo 2016."

The vet slicks back his hair and bites his lip. He tries his best to look grim. "She should weigh a little more by now, at least! What has she been eating?"

"Thesaurus flakes, newspaper clippings. A can or two of humour a week -- dried, of course." You think a little harder. "She's free-roam when I'm at work, too -- I'm not sure how much she hunts, myself, or how much the neighbourhood aunties feed her."

"Maybe that's it. You should really wean them off newspapers once they reach a certain depth."

"Why not?"

"They're easily digestible, but too much can leave your poem with an irony deficiency."

"Oh." You ponder the consequences. "Can give supplements or not?"

At this, your twin cinema yowls and wriggles out of your grasp, skittling across the vet's table like a pack of rustling leaves.

"Dunno," says the vet. "They're in short supply these days. What I can recommend, however, is something to give your poem room to grow -- "

You're not listening. He's getting on your nerves, anyway. Instead, you watch as your pet coughs once -- twice -- thrice -- and the fur on its flanks part. Something wet and pink slithers out, scuttles behind the vet's computer. From the other end peeks out a vague shape that quickly disappears under the edge of the desk. All that's left is the twin cinema's skin and a mound of writhing grammatical articles.

You stare at the vet accusingly.

" -- before it moults," he finishes, eyes locked onto yours, "into its component verses."