her mother called her
a textbook virgo,
levelheaded, organized,
practical

and every spare moment she had
was spent writing

most of it was hopeful...
possibilities outlined neatly
on elite paper stock -
serious poems to be
submitted to editors,
poems to celebrate
special occasions,
outlines of plots
for short stories
she planned to write

her personal writings
were deeper, sadder

she wrote reams in a daily
journal about troubled
relationships, tiffs with
her husband and kids, her
competitive sister, each
comment meticulously penned
in an elegant flowing manner

but that final note she left
was the shocker,
written in a freakishly
jumpy, shaky hand,
overly loopy, jagged,
a note on cheesy motel
stationery, filled with longing,
with despair,
words spewing out of her pen,
out of control words
scrawled far from home,
the solitary writer engaged
in an emotional seizure,
facing her phantoms alone
and losing