The Dark Dark is a far slower project, clearly, and that's a relief. I look for slowness anywhere I can find it.

I like the night. I like a slight terror to remind me how precious life is. Like I was sleeping with my smallest child and there were crazy coyotes howling outside. I knew how lucky I was to have her near me.

When I was learning to write I was surrounded by poets; Brian Blanchfield and Annie Guthrie were always with me as I was learning. I'm so grateful for the poets in my life. Because of them I always knew the importance of each word, line.

There's a voice when I write. I speak everything aloud. My family is so accustomed to me talking to myself that often times they don't answer me when I am trying to speak to one of them.

Wait," I say. "I think you're mistaken. Saying there is no dream is the same as saying everything is a dream. Isn't it? Everyone's a dreamer? Extraordinary things happen all the time even when we're awake. What I meant to suggest to you, if indeed that was me in your dream doing the suggesting, is that there is only one world. This one. The dream is real. The ordinary is the wonderful. The wonderful is the ordinary.

Much of the writing I do about the female body is to remind women, myself included, that they make life and they make death. That strikes me as a far more powerful stance than the weak lies told about mothering.

I'll just tell you what I remember because memory is as close as I've gotten to building my own time machine.