Dear Aanika,
I have so often found myself stranded on the island of your metaphors, building sand castles on the beach of your clever puns – I must thank you for being one of the best at what you do. I can only yearn for your power to make someone think how simple, and yet how difficult to observe, the things you can see are.
But I do not know you.
& perhaps that and only that can release me from the prison of my skull, for now.
Truth is, reading how you seem to stretch yourself perfect, until your skin almost cracks in the ten-degree earthquake on Richter scale that each line of your prose-poems is – I can’t help but wonder whether you know it too. The time that seems to stop inside itself, when your head feels like a test-tube containing a new-found element that reeks of impredictability, how your incisors don’t need to pierce through your lower lip because you’ve found a quieter, more painful way to shut yourself up – because your weakest writing seems more complete, more exhausting to pour out than my strongest song ever was.
That’s how I feel these days. I realize that three years is too much to keep dust on a desk, let alone a dirty piece of paper carefully ripped to shreds and scattered on my synapses. I realize a couple paragraphs is way too few words to clog up my limbic system. And that’s the main reason I have poured sulfuric acid over my tears to make them burn out and hide in public. That’s why I’ve given my cries for help food-poisoning so they’ve become too busy throwing up on each other and all over their mother-ideas, to come out of my mouth.
Worst thing is, the important people in my life expect me to think of what happened as a bad manuscript I wrote during childhood, now shut forever and lying in a puddle of liquefied ashes. Or am I the one who requires these high shutting-book skills from my anxiety-ridden hands?
Worse yet, I fear the knife-words accidentally chopping off my fingers, my soul, my life, as they might miscook a response more damaging than sushi. Or is my silence the most infectious wound in the big picture?
Sometimes, in the late afternoon up until the a.m. hours that allow me the luxury of sleep, it seems I’ve reached a cement dead-end. I bang my head against the guilt of having received so much help and still needing to spill out black words. I pull at my hair with the scissors of doubt, wondering what, and how much of this what, must be wrong in order for me to keep these inside me, like extremely rare stamps ... that have been touched.
I worry.
& the more worrisome thing is how not to even hint at this storm inside of a snowglobe that’s slightly, just slightly freezing my ear-lobes.
I am a lucky person. I should be a positive person. I must be a dutiful person. I might be human, the human that beats herself up over humanness.
& I, I remember my hasty handwriting, my professor’s voice, and the mnemonic techniques that involved a bad memory and a lot of associated sadness –
Social reflection – the self-image genesis mechanism of adopting the opinions of social mirrors, people one highly invests in affectively.
So, what do I do, Aanika? When I feel I owe it to my loved ones to sew them the most beautiful needlepoint and I think the most beautiful needlepoint is made of stitches that will keep my lips together in the shape of a smiley? When I feel I’m embroidering linen on the yarn and won’t let myself allow a tetanus-shut to touch my scratched fingers? What do I do then?
Sincerely,
Diana
p.s. We should chat more often, so next time I might have more to say to you than just what an incredible poet you are. I swear I can usually hold a conversation without whining this much.
Author notes
June 22, 2009
I've heard that stamps lose their value as collectibles if they've been touched by hand.
If anyone has a better or more correct way of phrasing the definition of social reflection as a self-image genesis mechanism, please do tell me.
Sorry this turned out so whiny. It's both options combined, but mostly #2 (referring to both option number and the quality of my writing, if you know what I mean 
)
A contest entry
- write me a letter, yeah. by aanika.
1998 points, ended July 5, 34 entries
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest
Honesty.
Comments
1 - 8 of 8
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I really like this, and I didn't think that it was whiny at all
the only thing I didn't get was the "tetanus-shut" part - I'm not sure what that is? Other than that though I thought that this was an amazing letter!
Polly
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I love your new picture!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetanus a tetanus shot is a vaccine against tetanus. I got it twice (the vaccine that is)
thanks for all your comments! -
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I know what a tetanus shot is I was wondering why you had "shut" - or was it a typo? I love your poetry, I'm glad I got a chance to catch up on some of it!
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ah, sorry
Yeah, it was a typo I didn't notice _ I'll be sure to correct it when I get back on my home computer
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Impredictability? Mmmmmm. Maybe unpredicatbility? Maybe not! Am just rambling. I am a fan of aanika's and of yours! I find it beautiful, beautiful, that someone of your own talent pays homage so openly to that of another. " The scissors of doubt" are akin to selective surgery, are they not? We all scissor-snip with them , all day /night long, if we are true to growth- the personal oath- surely? " ( You are a true-fan of annnika's writing for you've tuned in too nine and the umbilical cord) You were sublimialy succint at introducing them. I LOVED your questioning tone, your voice is not whiny but wondering, there is NOTHING wrong with wondering. I hope aanika finds this missive as endearing as I do. I admire and am impressed by both of you.
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I'm not sure about that word either - I'll look it up more.
I enjoy your rambling
It's poetic and always makes me think.
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this isn't whiny in the slightest. it's self-aware and beautiful.
i can't decide which letters i like better; the ones about me, or the ones about you guys. i love seeing how people see themselves, and this is exactly what i wanted from option two.
you're a beautiful person, diana, and i'm not sure if you know that because of all that you've been through but i have a sense for these kinds of things. and i can tell.
p.s. i agree. i want to get to know you.
<3 -
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aww thank you! I don't know, really, I think about others' issues and I really haven't been through that much, but I do try to be better for my bad experiences. Thanks for your kind words - that means a lot to me!
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