Everything people did seemed so silly, because they only died in the end.

I inhabit the wax image of myself, a doll's body. Sickness begins here; I am a dartboard for witches.

I wondered what I thought I was burying.

I said: I must remember this, being small.

I thought if only I had a keen, shapely bone structure to my face or could discuss politics shrewdly or was a famous writer Constantin might find me interesting enough to sleep with. And then I wondered if as soon as he came to like me he would sink into ordinariness, and if as soon as he came to love me I would find fault, the way I did with Buddy Willard and the boys before him.

I keep wanting to crawl back into the womb.

Look at that ugly dead mask here and do not forget it. It is a chalk mask with dead dry poison behind it, like the death angel. It is what I was this fall, and what I never want to be again. The pouting disconsolate mouth, the flat, bored, numb, expressionless eyes: symptoms of the foul decay within.