"You Are Not I" is a short story by Paul Bowles written in 1948 and first published in the January 1948 issue of Mademoiselle magazine.
It later appeared in the collection of his short fiction, The Delicate Prey and Other Stories (1950), published by Random House.
When she arrives at the institution, she writes the narrative that constitutes the story, believing that she now occupies her sister's home, and that she has exchanged existences with her sibling.
So when I woke up I began writing, without putting the light on, in the dark - long dash I could barely read it the next day.
Down as far a putting the stones in the mouths [of the deceased]..."[5]Bowles's first-person narrative, "an exploration of a neurotic human consciousness" is delivered by an inmate of a mental institution.
On the similarity of this story to the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Bowles biographer Allen Hibbard writes: In "You Are Not I" the screw is given one more turn.
Shot in six days on a $12,000 budget, it developed a following soon after a well-received premiere at the Public Theater, only to be pulled out of circulation when a warehouse fire destroyed the film's negative.