"Here on this ring of grass we have sat together, bound by the tremendous power of some inner compulsion. The trees wave, the clouds pass. The time approaches when these soliloquies shall be shared. We shall not always give out a sound like a beaten gong as one sensation strikes and then another. Children, our lives have been gongs striking; clamour and boasting; cries of despair; blows on the nape of the neck in gardens."
-Virginia Woolf
The Waves (1931), pp. 39-40
.
I never made it to the lighthouse
your words ate at my brain
as mice chewed holes
in the last of my memoirs.
Now I drown
with only stars by my side -
the ones he drew on me
while he counted my ribs
and pronounced me "woman"
on the day we conceived
and happiness bled from our pores
only to turn sour.
I am empty.
If the waves suffocate me
I shall open the book to page one; begin again
and let my words be the salt of debauched literature;
the embryo of truth.
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