And While It Is True That I

I Want Hard Stories, I Demand Them From Myself. Hard Stories Are Worth The Difficulty. It Seems To Me The Only Way I Have Forgiven Anything, Understood Anything, Is Through That Process Of Opening Up To My Own Terror And Pain And Reexamining It, Re-creating It In The Story, And Making It Something Different, Making It Meaningful - Even If The Meaning Is Only In The Act Of The Telling.

I Told Her, Don't Touch Me That Way. Don't Come At Me With That Sour-cream Smile. Come At Me As If I Were Worth Your Life - The Life We Make Together. Take Me Like A Turtle Whose Shell Must Be Cracked, Whose Heart Is Ice, Who Needs Your Heat. Love Me Like A Warrior, Sweat Up To Your Earlobes And All Your Hope Between Your Teeth. Love Me So I Know I Am At Least As Important As Anything You Have Ever Wanted.

Women Lose Their Lives Not Knowing They Can Do Something Different...i Claimed Myself And Remade My Life. Only When I Knew I Belonged To Myself Completely Did I Become Capable Of Giving Myself To Another, Of Finding Joy In Desire, Pleasure In Our Love, Power In This Body No One Else Owns.

Gravy Is The Simplest, Tastiest, Most Memory-laden Dish I Know How To Make: A Little Flour, Salt And Pepper, Crispy Bits Of Whatever Meat Anchored The Meal, A Couple Of Cups Of Water Or Milk And Slow Stirring To Break Up Lumps.

There Is A Place Where We Are Always Alone With Our Own Mortality, Where We Must Simply Have Something Greater Than Ourselves To Hold Onto-god Or History Or Politics Or Literature Or A Belief In The Healing Power Of Love, Or Even Righteous Anger.... A Reason To Believe, A Way To Take The World By The Throat And Insist That There Is More To This Life Than We Have Ever Imagined.