I'm always wondering if he'll return. Sometimes I pray that he doesn't. And sometimes I hope he will. I wish on falling stars and eyelashes. Absence isn't solid the way death is. It's fluid, like language. And it hurts so much...so, so much.

Fifteen. Sixteen was probably something, but fifteen - fifteen was a place between here and nowhere.

There is something so deeply visceral about libraries for me-rooms and rooms full of people dreaming and remembering.

I have met women who don't have close women friends, and I've always been like, "How could that possibly be?"

I think I had gotten messages really young that poetry wasn't for me, that it was for, basically, some dead white men. My experience and my intellect was on the outside of understanding that. I think that's what's so destructive.

I love slow readers. And readers who think about what I've written, think about how it's written - and copy me!

There is so much work left to be done in the world and for me, I am hoping to make the change I can and do the work I need to do through this gift I've been given.