I Would Like To Tell You That

You Could Not Be Filled With Hate And Be Beautiful. Like Any Other Girl, I Wanted To Be Beautiful. But I Was Filled With Hate.

I Watched My Beautiful Sister Running . . . And I Knew She Was Not Running Away From Me Or Toward Me. Like Someone Who Has Survived A Gut-shot, The Wound Had Been Closing, Closing - Braiding Into A Scar For Eight Long Years.

There Was Our Father, The Heart We Knew Held All Of Us. Held Us Heavily And Desperately, The Doors Of His Heart Opening And Closing With The Rapidity Of Stops On An Instrument, The Quiet Felt Closures, The Ghostly Fingering, Practice And Practice And Then, Incredibly, Sound And Melody And Warmth.

I Couldn't Help But Think, As I Watched Him, Of The Barrels Of Toxic Fluids That Had Accrued Behind Hal's Bike Shop Where The Scrub Lining The Railroad Tracks Had Offered Local Companies Enough Cover To Dump A Stray Contaner Or Two. Everything Had Been Sealed Up, But Things Were Beginning To Leak Out. I Had Come To Both Pity And Respect Len In The Years Since My Mother Left. He Followed The Physical To Try To Understand Things That Were Impossible To Comphrehend. In That, I Could See, He Was Like Me.

The Relationship With The Words Someone Uses Is More Intimate And Integrated Than Just A Quick Read And A Blurb Can Ever Be. This Intimacy - The Words On The Page Being Sent Back And Forth From Engaged Editor To Open Author - Is Unique In My Experience.