Quote by Alfonsina Storni: “I am going to sleep. Nurse, turn out the light.”

Written as Storni walked into the ocean to end her life, these deceptively gentle words reframe death as rest. The quiet domesticity of the image — a nurse, a light — makes the finality more devastating. It is a farewell disguised as a bedtime request.

Storni sent this poem — 'Voy a dormir' (I Am Going to Sleep) — to the newspaper La Nación in October 1938, hours before she walked into the Atlantic Ocean at Mar del Plata. She had been battling breast cancer and deep depression. The poem was published the morning after her death.

Argentine poet and feminist, one of the most important voices in early twentieth-century Latin American literature. Her poetry challenged the social constraints placed on women and dealt frankly with desire, suffering, and female autonomy in ways that were radical for her era.