Teenagers Are Free Verse Walking Around On

The Bottom Line Is I'm Writing To Save The Dead. I'm Writing To Save The People I Have Lost, Some Of Whose Bodies Are Still Walking Around.

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.

If I Could Have Found What I Needed At Thirteen, I Would Not Have Lost So Much Of My Life Chasing Vindication Or Death. Give Some Child, Some Thirteen-year Old, The Hope Of The Remade Life. Tell The Truth. Write The Story That You Were Always Afraid To Tell. I Swear To You There Is Magic In It.

My Heart Broke All Over Again. I Wanted My Life Back, My Mama, But I Knew I Would Never Have That. The Child I Had Been Was Gone With The Child She Had Been. We Were New People, And We Didn't Know Each Other Anymore. I Shook My Head Desperately.

It's Fun To Tease People About Where Fiction And Life Intersect.