Fantasy Is One Of The Soul's Brighter

…then Another Porpoise Broke The Water And Rolled Toward Us. A Third And Fourth Porpoise Neared. The Visitation Was Something So Rare And Perfect That We Knew By Instinct Not To Speak—and Then As Quickly As They Had Come, The Porpoises Moved Away From Us…each Of Us Would Remember That All During Our Lives. It Was The Purest Moment Of Freedom And Headlong Exhilaration That I Had Ever Felt. A Wordless Covenant Was Set, And I Would Go Back In My Imagination, And Return To Where Happiness Seemed So Easy To Touch.

There Is No Teacher More Discriminating Or Transforming Than Loss.

I Learned That If I Could Read, I Could Cook. I Surprised Myself I Like It.

Evil Would Always Come To Me Disguised In Systems And Dignified By Law.

My Mother, Southern To The Bone, Once Told Me, “all Southern Literature Can Be Summed Up In These Words: ‘on The Night The Hogs Ate Willie, Mama Died When She Heard What Daddy Did To Sister.’” She Raised Me Up To Be A Southern Writer, But It Wasn’t Easy.