“Everyone in me is a birdI am beating all my wings”

“At night the bats will beat on the trees, knowing it all, seeing what they sensed all day....”

“And we are magic talking to itself, noisy and alone. I am queen of all my sins forgotten. Am I still lost? Once I was beautiful. Now I am myself”

“and God was there like an island I had not rowed to,still ignorant of Him, my arms, and my legs worked,and I grew, I grew,I wore rubies and bought tomatoesand now, in my middle age,about nineteen in the head I'd say,I am rowing, I am rowingthough the oarlocks stick and are rustyand the sea blinks and rollslike a worried eyebal,but I am rowing, I am rowing,though the wind pushes me backand I know that that island will not be perfect,it will have the flaws of life,the absurdities of the dinner table,but there will be a doorand I will open itand I will get rid of the rat insdie me,the gnawing pestilential rat.God will take it with his two handsand embrace it”

“She suffers according to the digitsof my hate. I hear the filamentsof alabaster. I would lie downwith them and lift my madnessoff like a wig. I would lieoutside in a room of wooland let the snow cover me.Paris white or flake whiteor argentine, all in the washbasinof my mouth, calling “Oh.”I am empty. I am witless.Death is here. There is noother settlement.”

“Sometimes I fly like an eagle but with the wings of a wren”

“Death, I need my little addiction to you. I need that tiny voice who, even as I rise from the sea, all woman, all there, says kill me, kill me.”