Dear Sylvia,

It is 1 AM and I should be sleeping, but I’m not. I can’t. This has been happening a lot lately; it is as if at 1 AM something in my brain switches on that magically washes a wave of insomnia over me, one that takes a while to die down. Reading your poem “Insomniac” helps speed up the process. I find it so spectacular that you have the ability to transform such troublesome things into beautiful stanzas and such. One of the things that I did when I couldn’t sleep was copy “Insomniac” into one of my notebooks.

Nighttime/very early in the morning is such a nice time to write.

I think that my house may be haunted (or maybe it is my mind). I keep seeing half-formed figures and such around. I don’t think I’m going mad, Sylvia, but this is really odd. It’s one of the reasons why I am having such a tough time going to sleep tonight; I saw someone standing over me, and it wasn’t my mother. I only realized this later, though, so I didn’t fully look.

Why are things so odd? So complicated?

If there are ghosts, they have probably emerged from the dusty corners of my mind. —Britney