Take your foot out of the graveyard, they are busy being dead.

Once I was beautiful. Now I am myself, Counting this row and that row of moccasins Waiting on the silent shelf.

I tell you what you’ll never really know: all the medical hypothesis that explained my brain will never be as true as these struck leaves letting go.

Not that it was beautiful, but that I found some order there.

For I could not read or speak and on the long nights I could not turn the moon off or count the lights of cars across the ceiling.

I love you. You are closest to my heart, closer than any other human being. You are my extension. You are my prayer. You are my belief in God. For better or worse you inherit me.

The summer has seized you, as when, last month in Amalfi, I saw lemons as large as your desk-side globe-that miniature map of the world-and I could mention, too, the market stalls of mushrooms and garlic bugs all engorged. Or I even think of the orchard next door, where the berries are done and the apples are beginning to swell. And once, with our first backyard,I remember I planted an acre of yellow beans we couldn't eat.