Sometimes I write what I can't paint, and I paint what I can't write. I use a different part of the brain.

Only the ship is made of books, its sails thousands of overlapping pages, and the sea it floats upon is dark black ink.

Old stories have a habit of being told and retold and changed. Each subsequent storyteller puts his or her mark upon it. Whatever truth the story once had is buried in bias and embellishment. The reasons do not matter as much as the story itself.

The fact that people are already reading and loving something I wrote is still hard to believe.

The funeral is a quiet one, despite the number of mourners present. There are no sobs or flailing handkerchiefs. There is a smattering of color amongst the sea of traditional black. Even the light rain cannot push it down into the realms of despair. It rests instead in a space of thoughtful melancholy.

How are you managing to keep everyone from aging?” Celia asks after a while. “Very carefully,” Marco answers.

Wine is bottled poetry, he thinks.