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Duras (Nothingness)

When writing, the writer leaves the world. She vanishes into the

folds of her mind. She dies there. Alone, in a field of words. The

words are the field, are the words and images of her mind, made

manifest, manifold. By writing, the writer leaves her body and

enters the page, the text, the otherworld, the one she dreams.

When writing, the writer dies. She dies to the world. The phone,

the bloody black ringer, rings on; the birds sing outside the shut

glass window, the writer is gone. Writing is transformation,

transportation. By writing, the writer leaves. Her body remains.

Her body, a terrible hump of flesh and blood, cells and disease. But

she is given the gift, grace—she is able to escape her body and the

world. She is transported via the electricity inside her mind into

the page, into the sea of the words.

M.D. becomes nothing by writing. By thinking, already escapes.

Poverty and drinking, destitution, isolation, a lifetime of

abandonment. And memory. Booze loosens it up. Booze closes it

down. Writing is the same, though different. Writing breaks down

all the doors, smashes all the windows in the house, her great big

white mansion—and she is free.

from Guidebooks for the DeadFind more by Cynthia Cruz at the library

Copyright © 2020 Cynthia Cruz
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Four Way Books.

Published in Cynthia Cruz Poems

This program is supported in part by a grant from the Idaho Humanities Council, a State-based program of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this (publication, website, exhibit, etc.) do not necessarily represent those of the Idaho Humanities Council or the National Endowment for the Humanities.