If Mind Over Matter is Magic

Cento from self-portrait as poetry about bad poems by Rachael Crosbie, EROTECAY and Folktales for the Diseased Individual by Pascale Potvin, & NO HEROES by Isaura Ren

I wanted a rewrite. Something broke within. I salvage; I alchemy. I tell myself that I am not the hero but I am the author. I transmute every scrap of light to gold onto bound pages I’m tired of writing.

I cast myself first as the damsel, then the dashing knight. Raw trees snap into apparitions, the heart of it all runs away from the poem, diluted with pastoral diversions, whispers, anything haphazard. The poem torpidly ghosts through.

I’d do things that would make me a much better person overall. Struck through my strikethroughs as if reeling words back to throat. I almost loved me. The truth, though, these days, I thought I needed euphoria.

Forgive my young traumas. I’m sure it was clear to the others that I was an apparition. Isn’t it poetry?