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.'

It was terrible when a single conversation with someone determined your whole future relationship.

why are we so monumentally slow?

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

You know, those of us who leave our homes in the morning and expect to find them there when we go back - it's hard for us to understand what the experience of a refugee might be like.

like our parents always told us not to like firefighters warn against we're playing games and making the rules up as we go we're matching warmth to warmth starting fires burning wishes into our skin we're hidden holding forbidden lights we're children whose fathers have never taught never touch but we're finding these new flames we smother at the sound of footsteps.

The hands are churches that worship the world.