A poem is like a child; at some point we have to let it go and trust that it will make its own way in the world.

If trees could speak they wouldn't

We're all writing out of a wound, and that's where our song comes from. The wound is singing. We're singing back to those who've been wounded.

There is so much about the process of writing that is mysterious to me, but this one thing I've found to be true: writing begets writing.

That's how it is sometimes--God comes to your window, all bright light and black wings, and you're just too tired to open it.

Death comes to me again, a girl in a cotton slip, barefoot, giggling. It’s not so terrible she tells me, not like you think, all darkness and silence. There are windchimes and the smell of lemons, some days it rains, but more often the air is dry and sweet. I sit beneath the staircase built from hair and bone and listen to the voices of the living. I like it, she says, shaking the dust from her hair, especially when they fight, and when they sing.

You’ve traveled this far on the back of every mistake.