This was written in another era of my life. Perhaps it is hard for an outsider to understand but I look at it and smile: I survived with and because of it. I think it’s important to occasionally honor the steps in between that lead us to the more refined pieces of poetry that we are more likely to share. I’m proud that I used words as crutches in a time when there seemed to be nothing else.

There will be a lot of crying alone. You just have to tell yourself that, repeatedly, until you understand that it is the case. That it’s not worth jumping off a bridge over. That no one is going to hug you when you need a hug. This is the way of the world, and you will be so without hugs that when someone does you will cling, a little too hard.

You will dream of Dani, who is licking pavement because in her memory it was a person.

You will not be afraid to write these things on a computer screen, but they will be silenced in your mouth. Your heart coming up into your mouth you cannot do, you cannot see, you cannot live with.

You will listen to Bob Marley, and you won’t be sure your reasons are pure.

You will write to yourself in the second person. And you will find that writing is cathartic. How I love seeing the words on the screen you will think.

Thinking about Cate Marvin and her poem “Me and Men.” Liking the idea of them. Her anger. Her anger! I feel that.

I need more of someone like Cate Marvin. I need to swallow Cate Marvin like pills.

There is always this feeling of heaviness/voidness in my chest, and I am always imagining how nice it would be if one could simply cut it out with a knife, without the gore of blood and guts and the whole dying thing.

I stopped reading books again, that seems to be happening.