…and I ended up printing out a bunch of poems from the auction of the mind part, because I want to read and re-read them slowly. And how strange then it is, holding the stack of papers in my hand like concrete evidence you exist. And I ought to find perhaps another way to render you thanks, but it felt so good to find inside myself I was responding to the poems, after what feels like years of buying poetry books and responding with this intellectual appreciation “Yes, yes, nice meter, lovely imagery, mmm-hmm” to find myself greedy for the poems, internalizing them somehow, remembering what it feels like to write with the tongue forming the words synchronously with the pen.

And it leads me back to how hard blogging can be when I feel locked into a particular tone, a particular voice. Reminds me that the most personal writing is not about our medical histories or our sex lives, the things that would hurt other people to read, but the stuff that tells you what it feels like to be me. The world has so many commentators on stuff, and my voice feels lost in the throngs there, but it is also really sort of frightening to experiment again with writing from a point of the girl who loved words for themselves as much as for the ideas that they allowed her to express. It’s happening a little in the daily longhand pages, but that’s rather reminiscent of practicing walking in unaccustomed high heels in one’s own bedroom before risking stumbling about in public.

So, were you satisfied with HP7?