A shame really, because putting the right book in the right kid’s hands is kind of like giving that kid superpowers.

Sometimes my feelings get so big that I just want to swim out into the darkness. Just jump off the end of the world. Sometimes I want to dig, right down to the bones of everything. Sometimes when you dig, you dig up stuff you might not want to find. But that’s where the good stuff lies.

Is there any other way to be? I mean, this is it. This is my body, my soul; I gotta live with it. I'd better get comfortable. I plan on taking it for a long ride.

Silent is the ruined land. Man is brutal and the rain does not wash away the pain or rid the distant memory. It makes it glisten.

Sure we girls can wear pants now, and vote, and go to college, have a bank account, get a job that is not just stewardess or nurse. But we still have to deal with micro-aggressions and daily sexism. We are still fighting for word over our own bodies. We still get the short shrift on equal pay. We're still not represented in media or the arts with total parity. Not on screen or on the page or behind the scenes. It's still not easy. There is still this constant low-grade fight to be seen and taken seriously when you are a girl and when you become a woman. It totally sucks.

I took that smile and I put it right where the hole in my chest was. It was better than coffee, or chocolate, or a perfect pirouette. I clutched it and held it tight.

Everyone got older but forgot to grow up.