Poem for You
X. XXXXXX <X.XXXXXX777@gmail.com> 
Wed, Jul 15, 6:46 AM

Hi Danielle,

I was inspired to write a poem about you.  I won't publish it without your blessing.
I would not dream of making you uncomfortable, and I do hope you can see that I am just being inspired.  I'd never stalk you or anything else.  

It is attached and I am pasting it below.
I very much enjoy your writing.  

Best,

X.

The email came the morning of my wisdom teeth surgery. The poem was bad, a man wishing he could use a time machine so his current self and his “younger, healthier” self could have a threesome with me. “And we can make love to you / Like wild animals / Who worship wild animal gods / And goddesses.” They would take turns ravaging me with tender care. They would fill my heart with love. They would feed me grapes while I pontificate in the afterglow. I would never feel lonely again.

In the dental suite, the television screen was playing a compilation of cute animal videos. The dentist kept asking stupid questions as she hooked me up to the IV. I just stopped answering. I hated when doctors did that. She aggressively repeated the questions, almost shouting, as if my answers were necessary, like the anaesthesia wouldn’t work without them. “What do you DO?” I don’t want to say I’m a writer. Just knock me out.

Another Bad Poem 4U
X. XXXXXX <X.XXXXXX777@gmail.com> 
Mon, Jul 20, 5:18 AM

We could disappear into a safe little snow globe
In a little model  of a Bavarian village
Where the neighbors can't hear us
Where the cameras can't see us
Where god cannot punish us
A space where no one but me 
can hear you scream
My favorite echo chamber

The email came without a prelude, like my silence was a sign of comfort with his previous email, because I did not condemn him. I was reading Italo Svevo’s Confessions of Zeno, and I underlined a sentence: “She had left it lying passively in mine, and for a woman to remain passive is a form of giving consent.” This poem was lazier, disturbingly childlike, stealing from Dr. Seuss: “I would have you in a car / I would have you in a bar / I would have you in a chair / I would have you anywhere.”

Surprisingly I had no pain from the surgery, only a severely swollen face. I could only eat smoothies, ice cream, and mashed potatoes. At night the 600mg ibuprofen put me into the deepest of sleeps. I spent time on my phone or reading. I finally no longer had the compulsion to look at the 4chan threads about me. Usually they didn’t get to me, but the latest one had been more violent than usual. “​​Imagine beating her within an inch of her life haha, that would be crazy haha imagine her lip busted, two black eyes, blood dribbling out of nose haha then we have sex.” They were not as bad as the emailer, I thought, because they didn’t feel the need to share their fantasies with me. The email ended with a kissy emoji.

Fur Coat Fan Fic
X. XXXXXX <X.XXXXXX777@gmail.com> 
Tue, Jul 21, 3:53 AM

Going Down on You 
in an empty movie theater
Foreign film blaring
Your sticky heat 
all over my face
Strings of you 
Incognito
Underneath your new fur coat

He’s bending me over in an alley after a reading, ripping my fishnets. My pearls are scattered on the ground, my glasses crooked on my face. He’s teasing me in bed for hours, the tip of him dancing with my cervix. “You beg me to let you cum / But only if you ask nicely / Patience cums / To those who wait / And you're a spoiled brat.” He doesn’t need pigtails and he’s not suited for daddy issues but I could cry on his shoulder all night and day.

I wondered if I should be worried. At night, music blasted outside and I pictured him in a car, trying to serenade me. I was excited at the idea of killing a man, because I thought I really deserved it. But I also considered how sensitive to guilt I was and thought if I committed homicide I would eventually have to kill myself to free myself of the weight on my conscience.

Suddenly, I remembered the story I had published in a literary magazine in April, in which a girl receives weekly phone calls from an unknown man who describes his filthy fantasies of her. I wondered if I’d accidentally manifested this situation with my story. It wouldn’t be the first time such a thing had happened.

I could finally eat normally again. I ate a lot of sushi.

respite
X. XXXXXX <X.XXXXXX777@gmail.com>
Jul 22, 2026, 3:20 AM

There is no respite from my dreams of you.
I want to be your secret phantom houseboy
hidden in your closet 
Your magical shapeshifter

I want to be a little monster under your bed
I want to gobble you up
Until there's nothing left
and put you back together again

My friends told me to block the email address. But apparently blocking an email address just redirects the emails to spam. I said that if someone was obsessing over me, I wanted to be aware in case I needed to take precautions. But I knew I wouldn’t take precautions, because I didn’t know how. He wants to take me to church and wants me to sit on his face at the altar to baptize him. He wants to watch my ass bounce around as I trot along to take a shower after he worked me over for hours.

I posted about it on my Close Friends. N said she could find out who it was. Like me, she had dealt with being posted about on 4chan, and she found the incels’ addresses. First she recommended I go through my Squarespace website’s analytics to see who visited the day of the first email. But there were people from all over America, and a few other countries. After a few minutes, she texted:

XXXXXXX.substack.com

She noticed he had been published in our friend C’s literary magazine. Then she found his Reddit, where he’d posted about my book. But he’d also posted links to music, including a song by XXXX XXXX, who followed me on Instagram and had recently ordered books from me to a PO Box in Seattle. He was a noise musician and a self-proclaimed psychic and healer. He ran a small record label. He made radio appearances. He sold art prints. He had been interviewed by Bandcamp Daily, who I used to write for. I imagined making an Instagram Story, screenshotting his private profile and writing, “Stop sexually harassing me @XXXXXXXXXX.” But the idea struck me as nauseatingly self-righteous. I used to love speaking up for myself. Now I hated speaking at all. Something about turning twenty-five, realizing how annoying I’d been, how annoying everyone else was. All I wanted was to shut up and write. That was the only way to live. I knew that now.

I told myself I wouldn’t post anything until another email arrived. Several days went by, and nothing came, as if he knew that I knew. I forgot about it. I checked the 4chan threads. There were new ones. They weren’t as bad as the previous ones. I finished Confessions of Zeno. I walked four miles and climbed onto a big rock in the sea and sprawled out on it, blocking the sun with Bernhard. I met with my psychiatrist and upped my Lexapro dose.