Dear Catherine Opie I Wanted to Talk With You About What it Means to Purposefully Hurt Yourself, and Why it is So Appealing. I Also Find it Appealing in My Work, but Because I Make Theater There is an Expectation. That the Audience be Entertained, Not Harmed. And an Audience Can Feel Harmed by You Harming Yourself. This Always Feels

I knot my hair

between my fingers

As I’ve done for years

I love habits

I remember feeling very beautiful at my grandmother’s funeral

I cry at the thought of my mother dying. This is evil, because some peoples’ mothers have died.

I send them the mourner’s kaddish. This is evil, because it suggests I know more than them

about suffering.

I read aloud Louise Glück’s A Foreshortened Journey as it is meant to be read,

in the voice of a little girl. I wonder

what my own voice sounds like. How a poet might describe it. It is an evil voice,

they might say. I give the poem over to someone else to read aloud. This is evil, because

I have asked someone to do something for me. I pray

to my grandfather. I ask him to read the poem. We ask

of the dead what we’d never ask of the living.

And if I could be a granddaughter instead of a woman, maybe then I could touch my mother

with love.

Payson Whitwell is a writer from Los Angeles with a background in theater and performance art. Payson's poetry was recently published in the first issue of Dunce Codex, and her theatrical writing has been produced at The Cutting Ball Theater in San Francisco and the Elysian Theater in Los Angeles.