seizing the freedom...

To honour this, here is a message to the old me — and maybe to all of me — to the melancholic girl in short ripped shorts frolicking in the garden in humid summer rain, humming the tune of Salome and Grimaldi, and later blowing the dust off the old Soviet typewriter that's missing several letters: keep doing that, no matter what they say, how they'll try to mold you, make you smaller, make you pale in your face... Keep being the poet you've been so mercilessly growing into. There's this Columbo with a soft voice and a big heart (and warm hugs), and an anecdote or two (that you'll forever grin about), whose words about your poetry will one day make you weep the tears of joy of finally being seen & understood — and this will not even be the peak of that magic. This will be the beginning.

and!! cannot forget this ethereal Mallorcan god/guy (who's actually not Mallorcan but could pass) who will stick your William Blake book and your poetry in the back pocket of his sprinted-on skinny jeans (and then sit on it, I think), and grin at you like he already knew you called him a William Blake scholar in the dedication (he probably sensed it from the tremble in your hands) and you will experience a full-circle moment so grandiose, so consuming, you will fall on your bum on the stairs and have all of that tattooed in your very embarrassed consciousness (and bones) forever.

Fuck (and cringe) forever, little girl poet. (but do try to hold onto the rails sometimes, pls.)