"I don't think I've ever been so lonely Didn't know if I would make it out The dead of the winter of my life In the middle of the summertime And it still haunts me now

One of the most significant people in Emily Dickinson’s life was her sister Lavinia. Born two years after Emily, on February 28, 1833, the two were raised as if of an age. […] Different as they were, the sisters were extremely close. While Austin was often exasperated by his youngest sister, the poet called her bond with Lavinia “early, earnest, indissoluble.” Indeed, from young womanhood, Emily depended upon Vinnie’s physical presence when engaged in social activities […] As she neared age thirty, the reclusive poet admitted, “Vinnie has been all, so long, I feel the oddest fright at parting with her for an hour, lest a storm arise, and I go unsheltered.” […] Vinnie’s pride in her brilliant sister was as strong as her devotion to protecting her. […] When Emily died in May 1886, Vinnie burned her sister’s correspondence, as requested, but to her amazement discovered hundreds of poems about which Emily had given no instructions. Determined to share these with the world, Vinnie spent the next thirteen years successfully urging and cajoling others – Susan Dickinson, Mabel Loomis Todd, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, the publishers Roberts Brothers – to publish her sister’s poems and letters. Without what Emily called Vinnie’s “inciting voice,” we would know little or nothing of Dickinson’s great lyric poetry. - The Emily Dickinson Museum

scared i’ll never write anything

worth reading again

that i’ll disappoint the people

who are counting on me

that i’ll never learn how to be happy

that i’ll be broke again one day

that my parents will die

and i’ll be alone in the end

If I was Atlantis and you were the sea,

I’d sneak up behind you and break your knees,

I’d cut off your fingers and both of your feet

So you couldn’t reach me,

The Treehouses at HoneyTree Farm

Frediricksburg Texas