Death may whiten in sun or out of it.

Perhaps you considered yourself an oracle, Mouthpiece of the dead, or of some god or other. Thirty years now I have labored To dredge the silt from your throat. I am none the wiser.

The moon, too, abases her subjects, but in the daytime she is ridiculous. Your dissatisfactions, on the other hand, arrive through the mailslot with loving regularity, white and blank, expansive as carbon monoxide. No day is safe from news of you, walking about in Africa maybe, but thinking of me.

I don’t care about anyone, and the feeling is quite obviously mutual.

I want to be important. By being different. And these girls are all the same.

Secretly, in studies and attics and schoolrooms all over America, people must be writing.

Please don’t expect me to always be good and kind and loving. There are times when I will be cold and thoughtless and hard to understand.