my words fell apart so i used someone else’s

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