I Closed My Eyes To Watch Tiny

When You Started Thinking It Was Easy, You Were Forgetting What It Cost.

It Was Her First Book, An Indigo Cover With A Silver Moonflower, An Art Nouveau Flower, I Traced My Finger Along The Silver Line Like Smoke, Whiplash Curves. ... I Touched The Pages Her Hands Touched, I Pressed Them To My Lips, The Soft Thick Old Paper, Yellow Now, Fragile As Skin. I Stuck My Nose Between The Bindings And Smelled All The Readings She Had Given, The Smell Of Unfiltered Cigarettes And The Espresso Machine, Beaches And Incense And Whispered Words In The Night. I Could Hear Her Voice Rising From The Pages. The Cover Curled Outward Like Sails.

One Can Bear Anything. The Pain We Cannot Bear Will Kill Us Outright.

I Couldn't Imagine Owning Beauty Like My Mothers. I Wouldn't Dare.

But That Was The Thing About Zero. Its Weakness. Even If Zero Had Taken Over The Entire Universe, The Biggest Fascist Of All, One Tiny Gesture Could Deny It. One Footprint, One Atom. You Didn't Have To Be A Genius. You Didn't Even Have To Know That Was What You Were Doing. You Made A Mark. You Changed Something. It Said, "a Human Being Passed Here." And Changed Zero To One.