I got to thinking that poems were like people. Some people you got right off the bat. Some people you just didn't get--and never would get.

Words were different when they lived inside of you.

I wondered about the science of storms and how sometimes it seemed that a storm wanted to break the world and how the world refused to break.

Water was something he loved, something he respected. He understood its beauty and its dangers. He talked about swimming as if it were a way of life.

I do that with all of my characters. They have one of the flaws I have, and I zero in on that flaw.

Absent parents aren't abusive per se. They're neglectful. They love in a very imperfect way. There are parents like that, and they do love their daughters and sons, but they're not parents in the way that we might think of it.

But love was always something heavy for me. Something I had to carry.