Melissa Broder On Reading

I am a very hungry and thirsty girl.

I have an infinite god-shaped hole inside.

I want to be sated and de-thirsted 24 hours a day.

If I can’t be sated and de-thirsted 24 hours a day I want to be lifted up out of my body so I don’t have to feel anything or so I can feel only euphoric.

Sometimes poetry does one of these things for me: sates or de-thirsts or lifts.

I read my first poems at six.

I wrote my first poems at eight.

I have since tried many other ways to fill the god-shaped hole, but poetry is one of the safest ways I know how.

The main consequence of reading poetry, for me, is writing poetry.