I've learnt

Every night I pour a moat around my bed.

It keeps the heat at bay.

No rescues here, thanks, so I'm not missing out.

And I douse my bed and my body

so I don't burn. 

Don't bother knocking.

Sure in my stronghold, (no choice)

I sleep.

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.

I start a lot of sentences with 'I wish'.

I stay in bed, hoping that things in the days will arrange themselves

In front of me, a neat series of coherent necessities,

Stretching all the way to death, whenever that is.

I hope that there will be nothing to do, only

My being able to see, appreciate, think

—Entirely without the accompanying effort of proving it—

Will give rise to the desired destiny.

And so it is that I am gripped, once every couple of weeks,

With a terrible fear of a life in which I cannot decide

Because I have never thought out, or decided,

(This, too, you notice, is non-optional)

And I am swept off to things I don't want

(Ha! So I do have preferences!)

With (self-)pity for life-support.

And I decide then that I will take responsibility,

Think for myself, not be a ninny,

But I can't even claim the legitimacy of new year's resolutions

For these. I don't know where they go.

But neatly, cutting my losses,

I acknowledge to those who bear the brunt

The wrongness of my wrong.

I don't know if they forgive—

perhaps they belittle it, out of my calculated over-estimation.

And I do it again. I hardly realize I'm doing it.

Self-awareness, pah.

I can't quite explain why I have no stories.
No funny intro to my life, all the time I have spent
in all the years you never knew me,
Or in yesterday, or the day before.

I didn't do nothing, you know.
Though my funny bone is brittle
and my life tellable only in episodes, hurtling towards—
—more episodes to come.

Perhaps I'm too predictable once you get used to me; Yet

when you rewind to episode two or three for that joke—whatsit—
you'll have forgotten I used to be like that.

I'm tired of myself.

Actually no, I'm just saying that.

I do tire of myself, I need to experience the outside,

But my concern is with and for myself.

It's a kind of colonizing; reducing to an experience

All of that outside, and appropriating it

To write myself into the books.

I won't defend it as creative collateral damage.

I will defend it, though. Hold the fort

For my brain's right to devour, exploit,

To do damage to itself, to have its quality recognized,

To melt, impermanently, and be resurrected or reborn.

I Other you right back, you Other, you.

Take THAT.

Then it strikes me.

No use, and that's why I'm inviting the fight, again.

To be split-second sure, as I hear jaw decisively Crack

Again.