Emily Dickinson had no money; she had to ask her father for stamps and for money to buy books. – Joanna Russ, How to Suppress Women’s Writing May I write this word? May I write another? What a cost, every cold draft I put to the page, every death stopped for me because my ink ran out. Our fathers are not our friends, but our jailers. Their teeth are the keys to the rooms of our lives. Oh God, our lives are only rooms, one inside another, a present in reverse, and we’re the gifts never opened. No airholes in the box. We got you a puppy. We gut you a fish. We gotten you indebted to us. O Cotton Mather us! O Henry Holmes us! O give us our stakes and tell us it is our fault we burn because the light we give is too beautiful to hide! My soul in this letter, enveloped, unstamped. Countries I’ve never seen. I won’t beg. I will not—