American Names

The only way to be quiet is to be quick, so I scare you clumsily, or surprise you with a stab.

Many nights I wake in a shudder thinking of some atrocity of mine. I bring home minute pinpricks which magnify in the middle of the night into gaping wounds.

Loneliness does not come from having no people around you, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to you.

I read poems. I write. That is my destiny. Standing on the edge of the cliff about to fall into the abyss, I remember who I am. I am a young poet, a writer. I am here to make words. I have the power to pull myself back from death—to keep myself alive.

Rigid, the skeleton of habit alone upholds the human frame.

Once you reach what is inside it is outside.

Then I ignored spring. I struck out memory with an “X” but it came back. I tied down time with a rope but it came back. Then I put my head in a death bowl and my eyes shut up like clams. They did not come back. My hands were fastened down to oblivion. They did not come back. Next I took my ears, these two cold moons and drowned them in the Atlantic. They were not wearing a mask. They were not deceived by laughter. I waited with my bones on the cliff to see if they’d float in like slick but they did not come back. I could not see the spring. I could not hear the spring. I could not touch the spring. Once upon a time a young person died for no reason. I was the same.

In a sense, and as in melodrama, killing yourself amounts to confessing. It is confessing that life is too much for you or that you do not understand it.