Melinda R. Smith

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The song unspooling from my heart is called—. The true name and nature of "Untitled" is—. (I fought the devil in his aspect of a moth and lost.) (Now the devil hides above my bed.) (Now he bangs against the ceiling—the devil is an idiot!) Incantations are useless, nothing comes forward out of them. The hours when we sleep are loosely woven. My heart has coarsened, I can easily not care, I can readily shift the weight of my heart to the other side, life's many disappointments have coarsened it and taught me how to shift the weight of my heart whenever I want. Feelings fall out of me as though from upside-down cups. This morning I deliberately released the energy I had been keeping in a box, I was tired of the responsibility of holding onto it, but I did not get from the release what I thought I would, so it was less of a releasing than a squandering. But I have squandered so much in my life, what's one more thing? It was not powerful anyway, and, in the end, it was nothing to me. This is not my usual voice, I know, but it is a voice, and it is mine, it is the voice of disappointment. You can see that I am not skipping merrily to and fro in my syntax, I am out of the wild woods and I have taken wildness out of my thoughts. I am clipped and plodding, and there is nothing I wish to reveal to you, nothing!