june 15, 2005 - 1:22 p.m.

dear readers,

i wanted to let you know that i am shutting down, ending my years of diaryland posting.

thank you to those of you who have read my diary over the years (!) especially those of you who knew me in my audrelorde days. thank you to all the wonderful people i've met here, particularly theprocess who is not only a gifted writer but an insightful and gentle soul.

i can say with both tremendous pride and tremendous humility that i am not the person that i was when i first started writing here and looking back on my entries is, at times, like reading the writings of another person. there is something refreshing about that kind of change (progress? regression? who knows...?) being so visible. i can look through these entries and chart the very beginnings of my time in law school, the beginnings and ends of all sorts of relationships, assorted catastrophes, sicknesses, deaths, happinesses, quotes, political rants, and theoretical mumbojumbo.

i wish you all the very best of summers and, of course, the very best of things to come.
unsweptroom

The Unswept
Sharon Olds

Broken bay leaf. Olive pit.
Crab leg. Claw. Crayfish armor.
Whelk shell. Mussell shell. Dogwinkle. Snail.
Wishbone tossed unwished on. Test
of sea urchin. Chicken foot.
Wrasse skeleton. Hen head
— eye shut, beak open
as if singing in the dark. Laid down in tiny
tiles, by the rhyparographer,
each scrap has a shadow, — each shadow cast
by a different light. Permanently fresh
husks of the feast! When the guest has gone,
the morsels dropped on the floor are left
as food for the dead — O my characters,
my imagined, here are some fancies of crumbs
from under love’s table.