"There are
some feelings
you will never
find words for;
you will learn
to name them
after the ones
who gave them
to you."

"Be the person you needed when you were younger."

"You know, they straightened out the Mississippi River in places, to make room for houses and livable acreage. Occasionally the river floods these places. “Floods” is the word they use, but in fact it is not flooding; it is remembering. Remembering where it used to be. All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was. Writers are like that: remembering where we were, what valley we ran through, what the banks were like, the light that was there and the route back to our original place. It is emotional memory — what the nerves and the skin remember as well as how it appeared. And a rush of imagination if is our “flooding.”"

"So it’s true, when all is said and done, grief is the price we pay for love."

"(there are mountains
inside your skull
garden and chaos, ocean
and hurricane; certain
corners of rooms, portraits
of great-grandmothers, curtains
of a particular shade;
your deserts; your private
dinosaurs; the first woman)

all I need to know:
tell me
everything
just as it was
from the beginning."