A note about the work “Once I Was Beautiful Now I Am Myself” from Leila Chatti for the Michigan Quarterly Review's Summer 2024 issue: First, the poem’s title is a line borrowed from an Anne Sexton poem. I wrote this poem in a period when I thought I wasn’t writing; rather, I felt I was reacting, or perhaps channeling. I was at a point in my life where I felt both very sad and very powerless. Because I felt I had little control over my life, I became accustomed to letting myself be carried along, and then I began to write that way—carried on a current of the subconscious. This felt strangely freeing. I was turning into someone I didn’t recognize, in those years, or maybe, more truthfully, into someone I didn’t want to recognize. The self I’d been avoiding, the uglier parts in all this disruption dislodged and brought to the surface. This poem arose from the mix of wonder and horror I experienced trying to really look at myself, without looking away.