Grasp hold of my hand,
Let me take you away,
to a whole new world.
one I may let you stay.

In my cities of mistakes
Through forests of love
you'll see it all

But my soul sings  
and my heart beats a rhythm
a song you may never know

the bass from my heart will flow into your own
my words will linger in your thoughts

But can you hear the melody?

there is a word used for us,
a phrase for our situation.

lo-li-ta.

was i your annabel, humbert?
your first,
in preparation of your very own lo,
your dolly, your lover?
did you care for me, really?

(of course not.
you were fourteen.
i was six.)

did you understand what you were doing?

(no, that's preposterous.
you were a young teen,
an adolescent,
with hormones.

i was the smiling,
unsuspecting
object of your clumsy,
confused affections.)

do you care about me now?

(nope, wrong again.
you have moved on, after so many years.
i no longer know you,
your face,
your name.)

did you ever spare a second thought
to the bright young child
you corrupted so early on
in both your lives as you grew?
did you dwell on thoughts of her
late into the night,
contemplating her fate?

do you know me?
would you recognize me,
if we passed on the street this very day?
would i be easily picked out
in a group of girls all my age and complexion,
plainly marked by the ever-darkening
stain you left on my soul,
my mind,
my body
so many years ago?

i have forgotten you,
your face,
your name,
yet you haunt me with re-emerging flickers,
flashes of memory
forgotten to have ever existed.

for so long,
you have stayed hidden,
shrouded in the fogs of distant,
intentionally buried images.
but now you're struggling, humbert,
fighting your way to the surface,
messing with my mind,
my entire sense of who i am,
altering my perception
of the accepted and the tolerated.

perverts beget perverts,
so they say.
and i, better than any other,
know that you are,
indeed,
a pervert.

so what, dear humbert,

will

     that

          make

                me?

"Why one writes is a question I can never answer easily, having so often asked it of myself. I believe one writes because one has to create a world in which one can live. I could not live in any of the worlds offered to me – the world of my parents, the world of war, the world of politics. I had to create a world of my own, like a climate, a country, an atmosphere in which I could breathe, reign, and recreate myself when destroyed by living. That, I believe, is the reason for every work of art.
...
"We also write to heighten our own awareness of life. We write to lure and enchant and console others. We write to serenade our lovers. We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection. We write, like Proust, to render all of it eternal, and to persuade ourselves that it is eternal. We write to be able to transcend our life, to reach beyond it. We write to teach ourselves to speak with others, to record the journey into the labyrinth. We write to expand our world when we feel strangled, or constricted, or lonely … When I don’t write, feel my world shrinking. I feel I am in prison. I feel I lose my fire and my color. It should be a necessity, as the sea needs to heave, and I call it breathing."
('The New Woman', 1974)