My name is Charlotte Abotsi, and I'm one of the curators of Ours Poetica.

Today I will be reading my poem called "how i'm doin." And I wrote this poem in response to everything that happened last year, particularly last summer,  the summer of 2020. And it's how I'm doing. all my days are the same. i wake up & i am what i become: a muse for all that's morose. these days i just feel like a whine that never escapes the lung, you know? an inhale caught in the throat, you feel me? i am trying to say when i breathe in, my shoulders stay up, & yeah i've been the same since you last asked, thank you. you right, that was a minute ago. i guess time flies when you long to bite the bullet. i gotta remember to just start answering you know how it be since all you gon say is it be like that but i ain't even gon hold you because it really, do, be like that. it be your own imposter in the mirror, a lie in the reflection. the trickster that tumbles out of you on days you fool all your selves into wellness & n ** if we keeping it really real, i forgot how to stop being sad. the feeling has never escaped me. i went to sleep at the sunrise of my girlhood & never emerged from the dusk. the streetlights been on & i still ain't back from the park. i guess it has been a grip since i can remember not hating myself— that coulda been the last time i seent you. my bad, i know we all just catching up, & i don't mean to steer the convo into the darkness, it's just that when you ask me that, a serpent slides out of me to sing you a sad song. s has not changed since the last time. every answer is an attempt to say i am trying but every day i have wanted to sleep myself into soil & what i mean to ask is there a way you can smother me during my slumber? i am down to suffocate into silence. i wake up every day just hanging. in the slick of summer, suspended into air. i've been waiting at the swing set for someone to push. at the monkey bars, begging for a weak wrist & unforgiving concrete. random, but why everything in this park remind me of being a n **? anyway, you hear about the body they pulled from the swamp? i guess the tree gave out, crouched towards its inevitable burial & finally snapped at the neck, so i guess you can say i'm aight. just hanging in there from a noose of my own design.