Life overwhelms me. Put on my tombstone: she was overwhelmed by life.

Haunting Hill House



Journey's end in lovers' meeting.

It wasn't Hill House I went to;
It was New York.

It was the entirely new and different place,
the place I had never been,
the place where I was supposed to belong.

It rained, and there were stone lions in front of the New York City Public Library.

There were ghosts in all the corners,
and the city was a castle: all towers and spires.

I was more myself than I had ever been, living a foreign life, and I have never been the same.
But I had to come. I had to come.


I adore to be touched, but it frightens me.
It frightens me because I adore it;
It frightens me because it seems like another way I might give myself away.

Put your hand on my arm and I feel so loved,
so stupidly,
overwhelmingly, loved.
I feel as though I've suddenly become real.

I will keep my hand still, the way you do if a butterfly lands on you,
hoping everything I feel isn't bleeding into you,
telling you every small thing about me
until finally you are frightened away.

When I'm Nell, I never hug first;
It feels too--
It seems too--
[Too: an adverb meaning to an excessive extent or degree; beyond what is desirable, fitting, or right.]
I am very often too.

When you are starving, if you put a morsel of food in your mouth, your body will greedily absorb every nutrient it can, through your tongue, before you have even swallowed.

When you are starving for affection, your body will grab it from any casual word or careless gesture

And all you can do is hope no one notices.


I am outside.
I am the one chosen.

Yes, I think about myself a lot. Too much. Much too much.
Shall I tell you why?

This is not the puzzle I belong in. I don't fit with the other pieces. I don't know what the picture is. I'm not supposed to be here.
And, oh, my God, isn't it fun to mock the one who doesn't fit?
Is there sweeter laughter than laughing from the safety of inside the circle?

Every situation is frightening, every word exchanged a possible assault.
Like someone from another planet, I just don't know the rules.

I just don't know the rules.


No one wants to leave me behind,
but it happens.
It happens.

And because it's not deliberate,
I shouldn't feel it.
Her hands were cold
And she wanted to cry.
It shouldn't hurt.


Eventually, they send you home.
Once away from here, she will be herself again.
That was true; I did have to go back to being myself. My plane did not hit a tree on the way west from New York. But if it helps, it wasn't the same self. Never the same self.


And tell myself sweet stories