" It was not metabolically
possible for me to live; I looked at people replete
with constructed circumstance I couldn't believe in,
their parallel acceptance of an, at best, flickery
narrative. Ill, as they said, or melancholic

I, a kind of stressed dove, ever mournful of being born here . . .
took myself
out of our world, wanting no more . . .
words like hopeful, lonely: what could they be to me?

Now, I feel nothing—what I always wished when I was alive . . .
Why should we have had feelings, anything so clamorous or
hurting? "

― Alice Notley , Certain Magical Acts