You know how when you look straight at a lightbulb, it sort of
Blinds you for a bit and then lingers in your vision after that?
I hate that. I want the filament to be out of sight,
Obscured by the frosting, exalted by the cherubim and
Unknown to those who didn't pay attention in physics class.

I want it to burn out of sight, to shatter with the white heat it withstands
Without my seeing it; so that when it stutters and explodes,
storm in a glass bulb, I can twist it out of the socket myself,
toss it into the dustbin, with the word 'fused' to cover
The violence.

She said, what's the need to tell

all this truth? what's so great

about saying things you don't want to say

and the other person doesn't want to hear?

I didn't say anything. I thought she was silly.

I cannot find the word to explain, now. I have searched,

and I have searched. I have asked the people that I dared to ask,

held up a sign on the side of a street, rummaged

through everything and nothing, filled out empty supplications.

I cannot see it simply myself, as I used to do—a lesson

mnemonised, memorised and left behind. Trying to understand

is followed by failing, and sometimes there is the will to try again,

and sometimes not.

I can't write. I can't describe stuff poetically, pretty unusual words piled up (though actually quite carefully arranged) with an exquisite green tortoiseshell comb poked in (artlessly?) at the top.

Now you say—that was quite a pretty turn of phrase you had there. I'm sure you can do it! Don't have to give up hope(, beta)!

And I say, yeah maybe. But I'm a content girl, not one of those floozy (or pansy) form whores. The Real Stuff, that's what I'm after. Screw you, MBA-ed world with Pretentious Artist Soul.

I can write, you dryly note, these Wollstonecraft rants which say nothing new, and not very amusingly either.

This is true. And I spend an awful lot of my time agreeing to this sort of thing

Because I can. I spend a similar lot of time not laboring for my Right to Disagree with it

— in a positive, constructive sort of way, of course. But

I do not dare, I do not dare

to waste a lovely green comb

stuffed awkwardly

into my long, dry hair.