Keeping a journal served to make me feel more real, in the same way that a mirror does. An admiration. It provided me with a reassuringly structured, narrative meta-self that cohered and made sense. It relieved the claustrophobia, the loneliness, of simply experiencing myself. It projected me outward, as in projectile vomiting, as in being too full of myself, as in having swallowed myself whole. It transformed me into an artifact in page after page of writing and rewriting, as if I were a tree continually shedding and regrowing its leaves.

There’s something of this in public writing, too, a tawdry little psychodrama that goes on behind the text. My poems range from the frankly confessional to the impersonal. But having my words read is a little like being seen, being reflected in the mirror of the reader’s eye. But at several removes. Like eye contact filtered through two pairs of dark glasses, or bounced off the surface of an intervening moon. The text is an emissary, a surrogate I send out into the world to do my dirty work. It’s my bag man.

—Paula’s House of Toast