Sarah, I lied. This post is not for you. The next one will be (#lolZZZ).

I just have always loved this poem since I read it in high school.

I resonate with the title more than the poem because I think the title itself is genius, especially when followed by words explaining its meaning… **chef’s kiss**; it is a literary masterpiece… And I never told anyone this when I was in high school. I never added to the Emily Dickinson Conversation when we reviewed some of her most famous works. I never said or did anything other than expound upon what Google said her works meant… More truthfully, what Spark Notes and Cliff Notes said her works meant.

And that is because I was telling all the truth but telling it slant.

And it, Tell all the truth but tell it slant, received no credit, or rather poor Emily received no credit for her writing and her ability to feel so deeply, until after she died. And my high school self and this wretched account are dead, so this post, if even viewed by anyone at all, will receive no credit until then. Or I suppose now depending on when this is published, too.

Poor and clearly pompous me, for feeling like I am on the same level of writing and feeling as Emily Dickinson, and even personifying her feelings to her corpse. Poor and clearly pompous me, for even thinking a dead body would be feeling betrayed or disappointed or hurt or anything at all by this entire ordeal of her fame and love only after her, what seems as though, never-ending suffering.

What a shame that those who are trying their absolute hardest to communicate their desire for human connection and understanding and love do not receive any of it until they’re dead.

And that previous sentence, the one literally before this one presently being read, is me following Emily’s advice: that is me telling all the truth but telling it slant.

The Truth, when not told slant, is that I feel like the insurmountable vexation that progresses from having a mind like hers… one that makes her able to think and write this profoundly… is oddly enough the juxtaposition of the crux of progressive deterioration of that very same mind. I feel like it is oddly enough the juxtaposition of the crux of her, as aren’t the body and mind one and the same? Isn’t that what makes a person a person, as consciousness is too perplexing for even the world’s most intelligent psychologists and neuroscientists to “figure out” and explain?

Yet consciousness makes us human. It makes us different than the rest of living “things”. And isn’t that a good thing?

We are not animals but we are at top of the animal kingdom.

We are not unintelligent but we are destroying the one planet that keeps us all alive.

Make it make sense? Make the but make sense. Because I just simply cannot.

And that is what I find to be so profound about this entire poem. It’s the but in the title. That’s it… when I’m not telling it slant.

The Truth is I do not fucking understand the point of life.

I do not fucking understand the point of life.

I do not get it.

And no one can explain it to me.

That is the all the truth when I do not tell it slant.

However, if you do not tell it slant, that truth, or rather The Truth, is “too much” truth. It is misinterpreted as feeling emotions I do not feel. It is misinterpreted as me lying when I say those misinterpreted feelings are not felt. It is a whole bunch of an intertwined mess between me, “professionals”, and what is.

Therefore, I will just say what I said at the beginning of this entry:

I just have always loved this poem since I read it in high school.