Then I Decided I Would

I Could Feel The Winter Shaking My Bones And Banging My Teeth Together.

I Know The Bottom, She Says. I Know It With My Great Tap Root: It Is What You Fear. I Do Not Fear It: I Have Been There.

The More Hopeless You Were, The Further Away They Hid You.

I Knew Chemistry Would Be Worse, Because I'd Seen A Big Card Of The Ninety-odd Elements Hung Up In The Chemistry Lab, And All The Perfectly Good Words Like Gold And Silver And Cobalt And Aluminum Were Shortened To Ugly Abbreviations With Different Decimal Numbers After Them.

As From A Star I Saw, Coldly And Soberly, The Separateness Of Everything. I Felt The Wall Of My Skin; I Am I. That Stone Is A Stone. My Beautiful Fusion With The Things Of This World Was Over.