Then He Almost But Didn't

The Shop Owner Did Not Try To Push The Book On Any Of Her Customers. She Knew That In The Wrong Hands Such A Book Could Easily Be Dismissed, Or, Worse, Go Unread. Instead She Let It Sit Where It Was In The Hope That The Right Reader Might Discover It.

He Spoke Of Human Solitude, About The Intrinsic Loneliness Of A Sophisticated Mind, One That Is Capable Of Reason And Poetry But Which Grasps At Straws When It Comes To Understanding Another, A Mind Aware Of The Impossibility Of Absolute Understanding. The Difficulty Of Having A Mind That Understands That It Will Always Be Misunderstood.

Sometimes, Waking Early Before The Others, Wandering The Rooms Wrapped In A Blanket Or Drinking My Tea In The Empty Kitchen, I Had That Most Rare Of Feelings, The Sense That The World, So Consistently Overwhelming And Incomprehensible, In Fact Has An Order, Oblique As It May Seem, And I A Place Within It.

No, I Don't Harbor Any Mystical Ideas About Writing, Your Honor, It's Work Like Any Other Kind Of Craft; The Power Of Literature, I've Always Thought, Lies In How Willful The Act Of Making It Is.

For Her I Changed Pebbles Into Diamonds, Shoes Into Mirrors, I Changed Glass Into Water, I Gave Her Wings And Pulled Birds From Her Ears And In Her Pockets She Found The Feathers, I Asked A Pear To Become A Pineapple, A Pineapple To Become A Lightbulb, A Lightbulb To Become The Moon, And The Moon To Become A Coin I Flipped For Her Love.