A single note, held in an amber suspension of time, like a charcoal drawing of Icarus falling. It was sad and fierce all at once, alive with a lonely purity. It went on and on, until my own lungs were burning. “What bird are you calling?” I asked finally, when I couldn’t stand it any longer. The Bird Man stopped whistling. He grinned, so that I could see all his pebbly teeth. “You.

It's funny to think about the uncanny reflexively, as an author who is perhaps gradually becoming aware of my own hidden secrets. Accessing that shadowy territory really requires the physical act of writing.

It remains unbelievable to me that I have any readers beyond my own blood relations - it's a crazy, wild gift.

Somehow I wasn't adding up right anymore. My parts weren't summing into myself.

Hopes were wallflowers. Hopes hugged the perimeter of a dance floor in your brain, tugging at their party lace, all perfume and hems and doomed expectation. They fanned their dance cards, these guests that pressed against the walls of your heart.

I spent most of my 20s with these alligator wrestlers in the swamps of South Florida.

There are certain prehistoric things that swim beyond extinction.