Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously close to wanting nothing.

Widow. The word consumes itself.

I had hoped, at my departure, I would feel sure and knowledgeable about everything that lay ahead -- after all, I had been "analyzed." Instead, all I could see were question marks.

Out of the ash I rise with my red hair and I eat men like air.

I like people too much or not at all.

And, I think: I am but one more drop in the great sea of matter, defined, with the ability to realize my existence. Of the millions, I, too, was potentially everything at birth. I, too, was stunted, narrowed, warped, by my environment, my outcroppings of heredity. I, too, will find a set of beliefs, of standards to live by, yet the very satisfaction of finding them will be marred by the fact that I have reached the ultimate in shallow, two-dimensional living — a set of values.

I think the coming of spring, the stars overhead, the first snowfall and so on are gifts for a child, a young poet.