It's not enough. I am - what? For some reason I think of Virginia Woolf, who had a room of her own, and also stones in her pockets. Do we die for art, or does art die with us?

I'm not actually that retrospective. I'm just a girl. An administrative assistant who writes poems under her desk on post it notes, hoping to god today isn't the day someone empties the trash and finds out about my existential crisis.

I have forgiven my enemies. My mother is sincere now, and I am fond of her absolute disdain for everyone. When I was a child, she would throw things and chase me and call me unspeakable names, and I learned to internalize it as one does. Therefore, I am convinced everyone hates me. But her vocabulary is utterly fantastic and I laugh heartily at her mockery of others, her ability to laugh at what is utterly ridiculous.

I am a psycho. I count out the number of times I read sentences because I am anxious I will get the meaning of them wrong. I am convinced cameras are watching my every move at work. When I write those aforementioned poems under my desk, I make sure the person reading them will be entertained, so there's always some comedy to my madness. I do not forward emails because won't the sender know? They won't. That's the point.

In a panic, I text people back whom I haven't responded to in days because I was writing and submitting to contests. I refresh my email twice a minute. I apply to new jobs, eager and desperate to not have an old crow of an office administrator tell me to file the paperwork for a third time in one day. I'm done. And I am over it.

In 2018, I spent New Years Day at McLean, a mental hospital where Sylvia Plath and other illustrious poets slept and ate while overly medicated. I saw the ball drop at midnight and heard a song sung, one I hated at the time but now relish. It reminds me of sickness and being utterly out of control. Nostalgia, if you will.

I don't remininsce often, I am far too tired and still hopelessly medicated into sedation. But one thing I know for sure is: I'm still figuring out who this body is. I breathe. But do I think? For myself, about anyone else at all?

It is hard being mentally ill, harder to fight it, easiest to write about it.

ask the skeleton watering his roots; the flower blooms,

as the muscle beats to the pitter-patter tune. grow emotion,

miss the allusion once the canvas is painted raw but new:

follow your heart's a pretentious phrase; cliches are only broken

when society begs for their way.

& while eternity’s too many syllables for a broken word;

crumble the note. light the match, blow the smoke,

we’re salted ash and broken bone: watch through eyes

that aren’t your own, blind? those truths bind.

you’ve burned the innocent, cry. tragedy’s an overused

drug for me, sorrow’s simply ugly; bloodied knuckles

drying, gold tears staining. the statue of an angel mocks me,

we adore mythology; i digress.

i am not scared. / i know my breath like a mother: / child, spoonfeed the right amount of grief / swallow easy until stupor / until amnesia tastes like ambrosia / and the trachea has forgotten its tears. / i am not scared. / my fear molts, phoenix-wing through the fire / complacency colder, sharper, lighter. / i take it with me / even as my feathers bleed.

at night the bottletops mourn for me / stained-glass penance / beautiful because they are hollow. / that is to say, weaving starkissed reveries / from rattles. / that is to say, the antithesis / wrapped around my bones. / my ears only listen to themselves when they dream / of the music that never escaped past my lips. / the sounds that could have been. / sorrow sharper than geodes, regret / mercurial in my veins. / i am not scared / of peeling back my layers to the world. / i am scared / of never coming back.

we're like this: humans picking up litter that decorates

the ground just to throw it away, the truck takes it back

to another piece of land just to litter again. and yes, life

discriminates, it's cruel; picking and choosing who gets food,

shoving love down throats just for them to choke it back up,

blessing those with curses we don't dare think of, and breaking

down the people with words coming from other human's mouths.

life loves to remind us how we're all just so utterly, pointless.

then there's death, she's kind; she doesn't dare discriminate against

anyone, regardless of any crime. she knits a blanket over the world,

so to keep our corpse warm; sewing broken hearts together, bits and

bits of color: the color of your lover, the color of your pain, the color

of a hot summer day, the color of your broken winters. she takes your

soul kindly when it's time, while whispering, darling, this moments

yours alone, don't worry, you're not as life says you so: pointless.

they told me that grief would feel

crushing

all the stories and books

the poems and the songs, they all lied.

it’s not crushing.

i’m not drowning.

instead i’m dreaming about you

and waking up and remembering

and falling back asleep to better dreams.

instead i’m watching her suffer-

your daughter

my mother

hurting more than i do because you’re gone.

instead it’s “how are you doing?”

and they think i lie when i’m “fine.”

just

“fine.”

(there’s nothing else to say.)

i think i grieved before you left, years before, perhaps.

nine years old, i knew you’d be gone eventually.

nothing’s made to last.

some things are even made with the purpose of falling apart:

glowsticks,

piñatas,

handwarmers,

and humans.

“look, a butterfly.”

is it you?

i don’t know if i believe it

but i don’t not believe it either.

sometimes i think

that something went wrong

that i might be messed up

because i can’t seem to feel.

but i remember sobbing on the bathroom floor

in a place that was too in-between to be real.

in a place that was not life

nor death

an unmemorable place

because the stench of mourning overpowered the scent of

clean linen

of pills

and of bleach.

i sobbed there

and i sobbed on the side of a road

back pressed against the outside of a car

tainting the song

and the place

with my memories.

i remember the first time i saw you

but the memory is tarnished

like silver

with time.

the airport seat was uncomfortable, and i wanted to leave

not sure why i was there in the first place.

i didn’t remember you when i saw you

though i’d met you before

it had been too long in the mind of a two-year-old,

too long to remember.

and i remember the last time i saw you

but it wasn’t really you.

you,

with your skin the same pale colorless color as your hair

you,

with your breath too raspy to ignore

you,

not sure if i was there or not.

the real last time i saw you-

it must have been that day

when we sat on plastic chairs,

and you in an armchair

the blanket we gave you tucked around your ankles.

it’s the last good memory i have of you, i guess.

january:

- spent the new year in a foreign country and watched the fireworks from our laptop in the hotel room. (i tried to think of the colours painting the sky, and not the taxidermy that lined the halls.)

february:

- fell in love. (we wrote each other poetry and sent prayers from either side of the globe. they say paris is the city of love, but for me, it was valencia.)

march:

- became closer with a friend. (she thought i hated her. i thought she was too extroverted to like me. now we're baking bread and shaking dirt in jars.)

april:

- felt sick on a day trip. (we didn't have any medicine, and there were no pharmacies around. we visited a fish pond and fed some ducks. a duck chased a toddler around for food and i laughed so hard i forgot i was sick.)

may:

- grieved for a fictional character's death. (there have been many who have died, but not like this. he deserved to live. our technicolour dreamcoat man.) (long may he reign.)

june:

- rectified a mistake. (i wish i could have done this one more.)

july:

- no longer felt safe in my own home. (having your house broken into changes you.)

august:

- remembered how beautiful the world is. (overhanging balconies, reclaimed land, fields of tulips, windmills covered in vines.)

september:

- went to a party and almost cried. (whoever knew that surrounded by so many people, you can feel so lonely?)

october:

- stayed in a five star hotel, had a brush with fame, and wrote stories about girls in pain. (it was beautiful. heaven on earth, if one could be built that way.)

november:

- finished a math exam early and drew stars on my hand until i felt bright enough to draw a sun. (the horizon rose to meet it. there's a metaphor in there somewhere.)

december:

- didn't feel festive. christmas left us behind this year in search of capital benefits. (look at the lights, smell the trees, but none of it seems real enough; it's trapped behind a glazed screen and i can't find the door.)

there's so much i can't remember. some parts are so full while others are so empty. i wonder if life is worth living when we can't even remember how we lived it.

The way somebody comes back, but only in a dream.

Do you exist? Have I made you up?

But let me be unseen;

I leave myself, leave my trembling, leave my death behind.

Once, I haunted the house myself.

When I imagine myself, I am always leaving. I couldn't draw my own face if god asked.

And kneeling at the edge of the transparent sea, I shall shape for myself a new heart from salt and mud.

I am alive... I am beautiful... What else is there?

And, you see, I found something very human in that and it calmed me down a bit.

For the longest time I could not make it out of a poem alive. This one is no different.

I'm tired of talking, I've been screaming all day.

And all the while I keep telling my friend, I am sorry, but I refuse. I refuse to make this beautiful.

I am half afraid to hope for what I long for,

I remain as vulnerable as ever.

I laughed today. For a second I was unhaunted. I was the sun, not light from some dead star.

(1) we should be well prepared, mary oliver

(2) virginia woolf to vita sackville-west, 1928

(3) the waves, virginia woolf

(4) the empty book, josefina vicens, trans. david lauer

(5) carving the staircase, hannah waldman

(6) the vault, andres cerpa

(7) the beauty of the husband, anne carson

(8) reborn: journals and notebooks, susan sontag

(9) the complete letters, vincent van gogh

(10) icarus imposter syndrome, julian randall

(11) belong, daughter

(12) like good news from a pretty girl, eileen g'sell

(13) emily dickinson, from a letter to austin dickinson, august 1851

(14) tirade for the next-to-last-act, nina cassian

(15) it began right here, danez smith

I used to find the feeling of my hand in yours comforting

There was something that reminded me of home

In the way your fingers played with mine

Absentmindedly assuring yourself that I was still with you

But now you feel like cold biting air

And you’re nothing like the familiar warmth of what I know

You feel like a corpse come to stand by me

Not letting the fact that you’re dead and gone stop you

And your quiet singing voice

That only escaped your lips

When you were concentrating on something hard

No longer sounds like a meek nightingale trying to finding its song

It is replaced by the sound of howling wind

Forcing its way through a train station platform

On which only I stand

Remembering when the spot next to me was not empty

Your hot breath that once tickled my ear whenever you whispered to me

Used to make my heart race faster than I thought it ever could

And it still does

But now it also sends shivers along my spine

It is chilling

And calling for help

From beyond the grave in which you rest

With a rasp that rattles bones

Every time I feel you with me

All colour drains from my face

Because I know you aren’t meant to be here

You haven’t been here in a long time

Please stop reminding me

That from under your tombstone, you still call

Please stop reminding me

That you are a home I can never return to

i.    as soon as she wakes, she writes. it's her curse. ink bleeds on the tips of her fingers, leaving incriminating evidence on the yellowed pages her hasty script graces, a victorian quill in her grasp. she writes to remember who she is. for every night when she goes to sleep, she forgets.

ii.    she writes notes on paper dresses, the only garments that populates the wooden closet filled with mothballs. she moves the dresses to hang on the bookshelf. they always end up in the closet again. she eventually moves out of that room. it doesn't matter. every room accommodates for her. her skirt flutters like pages turning as she walks.

iii.    the musty smell of aged leather and parchment, though permeating the wooden structures she wanders through, never bother her. she simply walks through them as if they were water. they do not stick to her like they do to others, it's been decided that she doesn't need reminding of this place. it's been too long since she's left. they doubt she ever will.

iv.    words tattooed on her skin move, forming and reforming sentences, fantasies, epics that she cannot see unless she stares into the silver-backed mirror now covered with dust. they curl around her eye, dancing down to her shoulders and play in circles around her stomach. perhaps her thoughts make them move. she's never stopped to think about it.

v.    she looks different every day, everything changes but her mannerisms. she reflects all those who love her, who reside within her. it's difficult sometimes, all those memories flying around in her millennium mind. but she manages, sorting them like she sorts the shelves of leather-bound and loose-covered pages. each face is unique, and she treats it as such. but each time she wakes, she finds herself longing for something, for someone, an entity that not even she, with her organisation and calm, can remember.

vi.    she always smells like home, her favourite perfume. she spritzes it on her wrists and her collarbone daily, the bottle always at arms reach whenever she needs it, and breathes in the scent. it gives her comfort, like a ghostly embrace. to the lonely journal keeper, it smells like white oak and macaroons. to the quiet researcher, it smells like hawthorn berries and smoke. but to her, it smells no different to the aged leather and parchment she breathes.

vii.    her eyes tell stories, but her mouth and hands tell more. there used to be children. children running through the grandiose architecture of this space, but they'd all come and listen when she told them tales of adventure and friendship. her arms would be animated - the biggest smile on her face - and her voice would turn from that of a noble queen's to a storyteller's hush in seconds. it's been too long since there were children here. far too long. she misses telling those stories.

viii.    she's missing her ring finger from when the library of Alexandria burned down. she rubs it absentmindedly as she goes about her duties, shelving, reshelving, stocktaking, reading. too many stories were lost in an avoidable catastrophe, she often thinks to herself. but as she stares up at the wooden arches of her home, she worries.

ix.    she is the librarian. no glasses, nor evil glares. not old, nor young. no reminders to return the book you borrowed (she knows a good book keeps a hold of its reader), nor fines when you forget to return it at all. she knows books are meant to be loved (though she thinks people who dog-ear or rip their pages need to be reeducated) and has no qualms about who is to love them.

x.    she is the librarian.

xi.    she is eternal.