Oh but I’m so tired— I sometimes think people can’t know what they do to me when they ask me to ‘see’ them: how they hold me in the scorching light: how I dry & shrivel: how I lie awake at night longing for rest.

I lay presiding, like a flickering light, like a most solicitous mother, over the shattered splintered fragments of my body.

Death comes; nothing matters; at least let me see all that there is to be seen, read all there is to be read.