My Loneliness Tasted Like Pennies.

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.

Who Was I, Really? I Was The Sole Occupant Of My Mother's Totalitarian State, My Own Personal History Rewritten To Fit The Story She Was Telling That Day. There Were So Many Missing Pieces. I Was Starting To Find Some Of Them, Working My Way Upriver, Collecting A Secret Cache Of Broken Memories In A Shoebox.

This Is What Happens When You Fall In Love. You're Looking At A Natural Disaster.

I Use My Fiction To Explore My Own Unconscious Issues. I Usually Don't Even Know What's Going On With Me Until I'm Writing. That Doesn't Mean My Books Are Autobiographical.

That Was What She Really Wanted. To Forget So Thoroughly She'd Never Have Another Memory Again, The Bitter So Bitter You Gave Up The Sweet.