I Need Someone. I Need To Hold

Someday You'll Remember What I Said And You'll Thank Me For It." Francie Wished Adults Would Stop Telling Her That. Already The Load Of Thanks In The Future Was Weighing Her Down. She Figured She'd Have To Spend The Best Years Of Her Womanhood Hunting Up People To Tell Them That They Were Right And To Thank Them.

It Was The Last Time She’d See The River From That Window. The Last Time Of Anything Has The Poignancy Of Death Itself. This That I See Now, She Thought, To See No More This Way. Oh, The Last Time How Clearly You See Everything; As Though A Magnifying Light Had Been Turned On It. And You Grieve Because You Hadn’t Held It Tighter When You Had It Every Day.

No Matter Where Its Seed Fell, It Made A Tree Which Struggled To Reach The Sky. It Grew In Boarded-up Lots And Out Of Neglected Rubbish Heaps, And It Was The Only Tree That Grew Out Of Cement. It Grew Lushly, But Only In The Tenements Districts.... That Was The Kind Of Tree It Was. It Liked Poor People.

Because The Child Must Have A Valuable Thing Which Is Called Imagination. The Child Must Have A Secret World In Which Live Things That Never Were. It Is Necessary That She Believe. She Must Start Out Believing In Things Not Of This World. Then When The World Becomes Too Ugly For Living In, The Child Can Reach Back And Live In Her Imagination.

Oh Time...time, Pass So That I Forget! Oh Time, Great Healer, Pass Over Me And Let Me Forget.