About the Author Erica Loberg was born in 1977 and raised in Los Angeles California. She received her Bachelor’s in English from Columbia University. Erica was diagnosed with chronic hypomania Bipolar II in 2005 and continues down the road of psychiatric treatment. Currently she lives in downtown LA and works with the mentally ill. Book Extract PLEASE Please please please find a way to not return to that old decrepit self That old decrepit self that breaths beneath the surface of the wannbe real self That calls to itself cries with itself And hopes somehow it will suck the bad into the ground And find a way to make flowers Not shit infested mushrooms from my cats crap in my plant To a plentiful new spring home Where all the dark that I endure Finds itself a wild plant For someone to realize As bad as it is The shit that is meshed into the ground Will always be there Waiting to be watered And you can only pray you’ve planted other Flowers In the mirage of life And when those cloudy flowers breathe up into the air You already have a forest of fresh and new pedals to eat And breath up into a nose that is slowly finding it’s way toward No bullshit.