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.

We dropped our troubles into the lap of the storyteller, and they turned into someone else's.

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

If a teacher told me to revise, I thought that meant my writing was a broken-down car that needed to go to the repair shop. I felt insulted. I didn't realize the teacher was saying, 'Make it shine. It's worth it.' Now I see revision as a beautiful word of hope. It's a new vision of something. It means you don't have to be perfect the first time. What a relief!

Where we live in the world is never one place. Our hearts, those dogged mirrors, keep flashing us moons before we are ready for them.

The hands are churches that worship the world.

our limbs which had already traveled far beyond her world, carrying the click of distances in the smooth, untroubled soles of their shoes.