My swirling wants. Your frozen lips.
The grammar turned and attacked me.

Themes, written under duress.
Emptiness of the notations.

They gave me a drug that slowed the healing of wounds.

I want you to see this before I leave:
The experience of repetition as death
the failure of criticism to locate the pain,
the poster in the bus that said:
my bleeding is under control.

A red plant in a cemetary of plastic wreathes.

A last attempt; the language is a dialect called metaphor.
These images go unglossed: hair, glacier, flashlight.
When I speak of a landscape I am thinking of a time.
When I talk of taking a trip I mean forever.
I could say, Those mountains have a meaning,
but further than that I could not say.

To do something very common, in my own way.

-"A Valediction Forbidding Mourning," Adrienne Rich

This is by far my favorite poem. I don't usually even really like poetry, but this one gripped me the first time I read it and has stuck with me ever since. I have it memorized just because I've read it so many times. I have it posted on the wall by my bed, and it runs through my head whenever I'm having a tough time. Like right now. It really hits home for me right now, because I am taking a trip, and I mean forever. And I'm heading off to do something very common, in my own way. And I just want people to understand and accept that.