>From: Perdita
>To: Belacqua
>Subject: CRYSTALLINE
>Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2000

Belacqua,

You said something on the phone last night that made me think of this poem, so I figured I'd send it to you. I think it's one of few poems I've written that I actually sort of like.


CRYSTALLINE

Chaotically the shards
scatter at my feet
fragments of the Now
Revealed fragility
reconstructing Yesterday
an unavailing feat
a half-recaptured whole
of futile frivolity
Lavish incongruity
to what It used to be
its delicate Essence
and indistinct dreams
Lost in the destruction
of splinters buried deep
in my skin like Thorns
deflating memories
the Sudden devastation
of whole-hearted defeat
the shattered crystalline
of Abandoned unity


I rarely share it with anyone because I'm so convinced they'll miss a lot of what was intended. Don't you just hate when people argue that poets don't really TRY to put in all the intricacies that people later find and study?

I love you.
Perdita

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>>From: Belacqua
>>To: Perdita
>>Subject: re: CRYSTALLINE
>>Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2000

That's very clever: the capital letters within the poem spelling out the all capital letter title. It’s very subtle and difficult to follow, as it should be: chaotic, using words as more than just words. Thank you for sharing that with me.

I was reading your other e-mail earlier, and the word "wistful" just seized me. That's EXACTLY the feeling I couldn't find the word for, that mournful yearning. You were talking about the stars, and it's exactly the opposite here. I've seen so many stars they make me sick. When I look at the nighttime sky, I love to look at the dark spaces between the stars, the infinite celestial blackness. Those tiny pricks of light are millions or billions of miles wide, and they look an inch apart, but they're so far from each other they probably don't know the other exists. If those great balls of gas can look so small, how important can we possibly be? Taken together, humanity could not shine as brightly as the dimmest star on a pitch black moonless night, and it's so comforting to know that. It would seem like it would make me feel all insignificant and worthless, but hell, I feel like that anyway, and all I have to do is look straight up to be reassured.

You were also interested some time back about whether or not I hurt myself. I used to do it not a lot, but noticeably enough. All I had was a half-dull pocket knife and I'd tear the skin away under my watch so no one could see it. If I do it lately, I usually do it over a candle flame where I'll hold my hand over it until the hair is singed off and I can't hold it up anymore. I have bruises on my arm from over a year ago where I hit myself. I have a rough spot on my knuckle over my right pinky from 3 years ago where I hit a tree and broke it. Lately, I take a pair of pliers and clamp them down as far as they will go and crush my fingers until I think I'm going to pass out. Today I took that pocketknife, which is about as sharp as a butter knife, and I dug into my leg with it. I don't know why I do it. I don't like pain or anything. It just reminds me that I'm human and I'm not trapped here forever. God is a cruel, sick bastard.

Lucky me, I get to go to therapy tomorrow and make everything bright and sunshiny again. I think I'll skip home from the doctor's office to let the world know how wonderfully happy I am to be alive. I think if I ever did something that absurd, I would demand that someone kill me on the spot

Belacqua

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>From: Perdita
>To: Belacqua
>Subject: re: CRYSTALLINE
>Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2000

Belacqua,

Thanks for getting the poem. So many people have read my poetry and said, "Huh? People aren't smart enough to get the things you expect them to get." What the fuck is that? Yeah, the average person won't get some of the things I put in my poetry, but that's why poetry is so personal. It's like in my poem, Trinity. I use "kein mitleid" as what is an obvious reference for anyone who knows much about the Columbine killers because it's German for "no mercy," and that was one of their choice German phrases. They used to say it all the time. I used it as a means of conveying the way I've been reacting recently to the uselessness of meds, the worthlessness of life, and the fact that I've been obsessed with Columbine for so long now. I can't really expect people to get that, but it's there for a specific purpose and it drives me nuts that people can't see it. So I'm glad you can see the shattered qualities in CRYSTALLINE. Thank you for being smart.

This e-mail may start to sound like one big “thank you,” but I have to thank you also for the package you sent me. It's so nice to know that someone is out there reading, responding, and understanding. I expected from the start to hear from those semi-depressed people who are glad to see that someone's worse off than they are, but I never expected to come across someone who understands almost everything I write. It's almost scary to me, but it's even more reassuring. I feel so much less alone just knowing you're out there.

It occurs to me that your life has been seriously devoid of people to tell you convincingly what an amazing person you are. You have so much passion and so much talent that I hate to see you feeling less adequate than you should. You're better than all those people on the streets and in your classes. To hell with them. They're ridiculous droids wandering aimlessly through a life they don't understand, and it's just plain unfair that they're the ones who make you feel like shit.

It's not that I'm a necessarily vengeful person, and in fact, I'm the least likely person to do anything to hurt someone, but the concept of vengeance is a beautiful one to me. Vengeance is the only means for attack against the world that governs us, the only way we can fight back against the insignificant but somehow omnipotent crowds around us. I think that’s just a long way of saying that I think you deserve to take a moment to reevaluate the people who are hurting you and strike back at them. They've hurt you, and what you can do as revenge (short of going on a major rampage) is to TELL them they've hurt you and forget about what that does to them. Trust me, Belacqua, you deserve it and it's your right. And I fully believe that you can shock some people into accepting that you're not going to take shit from them anymore. You have no responsibility to try to keep people as happy as possible. That can only do one thing: hurt you even more. I really do believe you're an amazing human being, and I think you need to take a moment to recognize that.

I love you.
Perdita