A pool game mixes ritual with geometry.

Im always terrified when Im writing.

When you do try to picture the boys who do ask you out, they're absolutely featureless, like old carvings eroded by centuries of rain and wind.

I'm bred for farm work, and for such folk, the only A's you get come from effort. Strife and strain are all the world can offer, and they temper you into something unbreakable because Lord knows they'll try -- without let up -- to break you.

Childhood was terrifying for me. A kid has no control. You’re three feet tall, flat broke, unemployed, and illiterate. Terror snaps you awake. You pay keen attention. People can just pick you up and move you and put you down.

It turned out to be impossible for me to 'run away' in the sense other American teenagers did. Any movement at all was taken for progress in my family.

The words and sentences you take into your body from books are no less sacred and healing than communion. Surely at least one such person lives in your zip code.