I could almost hear the characters inside, murmuring and jostling, impatient for me to open the cover and let them out.

Together in our house, in the firelight, we are the world made small.

The world goes on, stupid and brutal, but I do not. Can't you see? I do not.

The rain comes down harder as I write. It sheets off the roof in torrents. I wish it would pound against me. Pound the life from my body. The flesh from my bones. The pain from my heart.

And I knew in my bones that Emily Dickinson wouldn't have written even one poem if she'd had two howling babies, a husband bent on jamming another one into her, a house to run, a garden to tend, three cows to milk, twenty chickens to feed, and four hired hands to cook for. I knew then why they didn't marry. Emily and Jane and Louisa. I knew and it scared me. I also knew what being lonely was and I didn't want to be lonely my whole life. I didn't want to give up on my words. I didn't want to choose one over the other. Mark Twain didn't have to. Charles Dickens didn't.

What I saw next stopped me dead in my tracks. Books. Not just one or two dozen, but hundreds of them. In crates. In piles on the floor. In bookcases that stretched from floor to ceiling and lined the entire room. I turned around and around in a slow circle, feeling as if I'd just stumbled into Ali Baba's cave. I was breathless, close to tears, and positively dizzy with greed.

And Robespierre, the Incorruptible, who loved us so much he cut off our heads so we would not be troubled by too many thoughts.