Having A Normal Person Around Me Made

There Are Women In My Closet, Hanging On The Hangers. A Different Woman For Each Suit, Each Dress, Each Pair Of Shoes. I Hoard Clothes. My Makeup Spills From The Bathroom Drawers, And There Are Different Women For Different Lipsticks.

You Never Come Back, Not All The Way. Always There Is An Odd Distance Between You And The People You Love And The People You Meet, A Barrier Thin As The Glass Of A Mirror, You Never Come All The Way Out Of The Mirror; You Stand, For The Rest Of Your Life, With One Foot In This World And No One In Another, Where Everything Is Upside Down And Backward And Sad.

That’s The Nice Thing About Dreams, The Way You Wake Up Before You Fall.

There Was A Time When I Was Unable To Get Out Of Bed Because My Body, Its Muscles Eating Themselves Away, Refused To Sit Up. There Was A Time When The Lies Rolled Off My Tongue With Ease, When It Was Far More Important To Me To Self-destruct Than To Admit I Had A Problem, Let Alone Allow Anyone To Help.

My Students Know I Have A Life, They Know I've Written About My Life. They Know Some Detail, Probably More Than They Know About Their Physics Teacher, But I Would've Told Them Anyway!