Writing is the one thing I put off doing. I can’t bear the thought of entering its rooms. I’d much rather waste my hours doing what I know: reading, cleaning the apartment, going online, daydreaming. To enter a poem is to enter a dream, awake. (…)
But writing poems allows me mastery over a miniature universe. For those moments or hours, I am God of my kingdom. No one tells me how things go. No one can argue against me when I’m writing poems. When I am writing, I get to speak. (…)
The world was too large for me. I was confronted with too many choices, so I made my world miniature, manageable.
I still have a tendency to do this: isolating alone in my apartment, not making plans with friends, following the highly structured dictates of my day-to-day schedule. Then my world contracts, again. My life is a box, tamped down. I like it that way.
