We, the Stories

“Not remembering my first childhood home made up for the times I considered it to be better than the second”

The man of her dreams is a girl.

Has your imagination ever brought you someplace so ancient, so golden and luxurious, that you never wanted to return to reality? No – she breathes. It’s taken me to ruins, cities where ghosts reside and dried blood clings to dead grass. I can still smell the fumes of fire, of war. She frowns at me and grabs my hand. I’ve been there many times. Even in my nightly dreams. Promise me you’ll never set foot there. I smile, wistful, saddened. Too late.

It was a strange winter and nothing and everything happened.

I wish that I could share with you the utter joy it brings me to spend three hours on a Saturday afternoon reading Emerson or Melville or Virginia Woolf. Or discussing T.S. Eliot or James Baldwin with a dear friend until dawn. The fulfillment that I get from going to church, from reading theology, from reading science, from praying. But I can’t… because I am me and you are you. I can’t relay to you the total fulfillment that I get from these things - it’s impossible. And I understand; you’re finding your own joy. You’re engaging your own stuff, that’s great. That’s how it should be and it’s a beautiful thing. But hear me - it is not a handicap to have one thing, but not another. To be one way, and not another. We are different shapes, and ways, and our happiness is unique. There are no rules of balance.

when you’re writing a first draft and new characters poppin’ out of the woodwork like