“Recipe to Recover There was an order. Each day a cup of water, yellow light a bowl made dense with cowry shells, two spoons of whatever goes into my mouth. I wanted to resist the contours of reverence, wanted not to be a woman of tiny reason, wanted time to come to me but it had to be done like this, though troublesome, it had to be my hand in the river my body laid down undressed my being the source of my own welcome, my own theory of disbelief. In translation I was to become an unbecoming— a stranger to myself in order to protect myself, my mirrors on alert. I had to enter the nursery of the red dirt, had to defy my devastated heart, had to take care of the witch who came before me to be the witch who came before me, that innocence of ignorance gone like a dream. Simplicity would complicate me my tender wildness not undone. It’s not that I am crazy, they tell me but touched by the bare lie of perdition. There is no hell but the one of memory so what could kill me now? Now that I wear The salts of my ladies? What thing? Not even me.”