I'm well aware that there is no job more important than that of raising a child, but the problem is that it isn't valued.

I want to drag knives over my skin, just to feel something other than shame, but I'm not even brave enough for that

To have my hopes raised and dashed again, it's like cold steel twisting in my gut.

I wake abruptly, my breath jagged and heart racing, my mouth stale, and I know immediately that's it. I'm awake. The more I want to be oblivious, the less I can be. Life and light will not let me be.

A tiding of magpies: One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl, four for a boy, five for silver, six for gold, seven for a secret never to be told

I want to drag knives over my skin, just so that I can feel something other than shame, but I'm not even brave enough to do that.

Life and light will not let me be.

I sit there on the floor with the picture in front of me and think about how things get broken all the time by accident, and how sometimes you just don't get round to getting them fixed.

I have lost control over everything, even the places in my head.

So who do I want to be tomorrow?

Let's be honest: women are still only really valued for two things--their looks and their role as mothers. I'm not beautiful, and I can't have kids, so what does that make me? Worthless.

It's true what they say, Love is a wicked game, A game so wickedly played, I am at your command in your wicked games.

Chaos is God's body. Order is the Devil's chains.

Happy World Poetry Day: 'The American identity has never been a singular one and the voices of poets invariably sing, in addition to their own, the voices of those around them.

Or is anyone's identity a matter of fragments held together by convenient or useful narrative, that in ordinary circumstances never reveals itself as a fiction? Or is it really a fiction?

I should have known the power-hungry slave drivers at River's Edge would see my five days of freedom only as a challenge to be filled.

There has never been a great poet who wasn't also a great reader of poetry.

I don't feel like I have to use big words or theories to get my point across. People are like, "Whoa. That's crazy" and make it into this crazy thing.

My mum always felt that women deserved as much as men, and should have as much power, so I suppose I opted to go into a very male-dominated arena to try and prove that.

You have to work with the ideas and give them a little push.

Failure can get to be a rather comfortable old friend.