The Witch's Life" When I was a child there was an old woman in our neighborhood whom we called The Witch. All day she peered from her second story window from behind the wrinkled curtains and sometimes she would open the window and yell: Get out of my life! She had hair like kelp and a voice like a boulder. I think of her sometimes now and wonder if I am becoming her.

Do you like me?” No answer. Silence bounced, fell off his tongue and sat between us and clogged my throat. It slaughtered my trust. It tore cigarettes out of my mouth. We exchanged blind words, and I did not cry, I did not beg, but blackness filled my ears, blackness lunged in my heart, and something that had been good, a sort of kindly oxygen, turned into a gas oven.

Mood can be as important as sense.

My mouth blooms like a cut.

O starry night, This is how I want to die

It was as if a morning-glory had bloomed in her throat, and all that blue and small pollen ate into my heart, violent and religious

Fear / a motor, / pumps me around and around / until I fade slowly.