This is the world I want to live in. The shared world.

I love the solitude of reading. I love the deep dive into someone else's story, the delicious ache of a last page.

During the Gulf War, I remember two little third grade girls saying to me - after I read them some poems by writers in Iraq - 'You know, we never thought about there being children in Iraq before.' And I thought, 'Well those poems did their job, because now they'll think about everything a little bit differently.'

Getting over what you did to me is not why I get out of bed anymore.

I'm writing mostly to thank you for living you eighty years and to tell you I love you and think of you often.

Later our dreams begin catching fire around the edges, they burn like paper, we wake with our hands full of ash.

Being good felt like a heavy coat, so I took it off.