Dear reader,

I fear I'm not a good writer.

I can neither glorify the devil, nor can I

write about conversations taking place in a pub

reflective of a revolution.

I can neither write about my husband or my daddy,

or wanting to put my head in an oven.

I can not write about

tragedies or comedies that change the literary world,

and neither can I write letters to my father,

my mother, or my lover.

So I write letters to you. I write to myself in an

attempt to read as though I'm not a writer.

My curtains are blue because they are blue.

My curtains fail to stand for something deeper.

What goes on in my heart is very rarely

translated on paper.

My journal remains empty

and my being heavy.

I'm scared my art will never move the world.

I'm scared that my pain is not painful enough to sell.

I'm scared of becoming a poet who writes a whole poem

consisting of one line

split in two.

And so I write about my fears of mediocrity and

my fears of being forgotten.

My fears of not being remembered to begin with.

And although my skin has words etched from books and poems

that have made me and will die with me,

I fear I will never write anything so moving

someone would want to take to the grave with them.

I fear I'll never write something that takes away another's loneliness.

So I write and I try, and I fear failing to make someone think.

I'll die with words etched on my body,

hoping to write something

someone takes to the grave with them.

So dear reader,

I humbly request you to forget about Milton,

and Chaucer and Joyce;

to pretend there was never a Plath,

or a Wilde or a Shakespeare.

I want you to simply read this letter

and understand my fears.