This was written with ink on some notebook I just found.



"Last winter I had gotten out of class late and my friend Cherie drove me home. We hung out in my room, lying in bed and looking at the ceiling as she sung Velvet Underground songs out loud and I followed the tune. But what I remember is when she sat in my computer and showed me one of her poems. I read it two times and was clueless about its meaning. Clueless, but I thought it was beautiful and asked her to explain it to me. She did; for one hour she closely walked through every stanza, carefully explaining the metaphysical content of every line. I stared and listened, Cherie’s hair was long and red under the lamp, and I think she still had her sweater on but looked exhausted and happy to be talking about her work. Wallace Stevens wrote, “After one has abandoned the belief in God, poetry is that essence which takes its place as redemption.” She looked redeemed.

There is nothing I like better than being around people who commit, who are emotionally tied to what they do. Elizabeth sits down in the living room floor to paint pictures, and her acrylics are sprawled all over the wooden tiles as the TV stays on. My mother puts down ideas in a journal with childhood handwriting; she works during the day and finishes her stories at night. My boyfriend reads excerpts of “Four Dada Suicides” out loud as we sit in the kitchen table, I interrupt him to ask about an image and his eyebrow rises up. Hope stands in front of me in Ballet, I love her feet but most of all I cannot stop looking at the way she dances: her eyes always stare at the audience and then up high. She only lowers her chin to put on her point shoes; never else does she lower her chin."