As for the poem, not this poem but any poem, do you feel its sting? Do you feel its hope, its entrance to a community? Do you feel its hand in your hand?

Alone, watching the Moon rise: tonight, a full circle,

“I died for my sins and because of this, I am in the woods now,aching. It is June. I am used to being a certain kind of alone.”

“June, July, August. Everything wrong, and nowhere to go.”

“Does it matter where the birds go? Does it even matter what species they are? They leave here, that’s the point, first their bodies, then their sad cries. And from that moment, cease to exist for us. You must learn to think of our passion that way. Each kiss was real, then each kiss left the face of the earth.”

“This is the light of autumn; it has turned on us. Surely it is a privilege to approach the end still believing in something.”

“She takes trips, looks at great art. But she’s floating. Like some child’s balloon that gets lost the minute it isn’t held. Or like an astronaut who somehow loses the ship and has to drift in space knowing, however long it lasts, this is what’s left of being alive: she’s free in that sense. Without relation to earth.”

“Or do you believe you have no home, since god never meant to contain you?”

“She stands by the pool saying, from time to time, I was abducted, but it sounds wrong to her, nothing like what she felt. Then she says, I was not abducted. Then she says, I offered myself, I wanted to escape my body. Even sometimes, I willed this.”

“it will feed you, it will ravish you, / it will not keep you alive.”

“[…] You get on a train, you disappear. You write your name on the window, you disappear. There are places like this everywhere, places you enter as a young girl, from which you never return.”

“…whatever/ returns from oblivion/ returns to find a voice.”