Quote by Alfonsina Storni: “I am going to sleep, my nurse, put me to sleep. Oh, my nurse, how I have suffered!”

Written as a farewell, this is a cry of exhaustion from a life of pain — physical, emotional, social. The image of a nurse is a plea for rest after too much struggle. It is one of the most honest poems about the limits of endurance ever written.

Storni sent this poem, 'Voy a Dormir,' to the newspaper La Nación on October 25, 1938, the night she walked into the sea at Mar del Plata. She had been diagnosed with breast cancer and had fought illness alongside a lifetime of social stigma as an unmarried mother and working woman in conservative Argentina.

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.