People are going to judge you all the time no matter what you do...Don't worry about other people. Worry about you.

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.

I think I'd rather have my heart broke than do the breaking. —Lena

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.

You can't always be pushing people away. Someday nobody'll come back.

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

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.