My Wound Is Geography. It Is Also

Evil Would Always Come To Me Disguised In Systems And Dignified By Law.

It Enclosed Us In Its Laceries As We Watched The Moon Spill Across The Atlantic Like Wine From An Overturned Glass. With The Light All Around Us, We Felt Secret In That Moon-infused Water Like Pearls Forming In The Soft Tissues Of Oysters.

You Do Not Learn How To Write Novels In A Writing Program. You Learn How By Leading An Interesting Life. Open Yourself Up To All Experience. Let Life Pour Through You The Way Light Pours Through Leaves.

Books Are Living Things And Their Task Lies In Their Vows Of Silence. You Touch Them As They Quiver With A Divine Pleasure. You Read Them And They Fall Asleep To Happy Dreams For The Next 10 Years. If You Do Them The Favor Of Understanding Them, Of Taking In Their Portions Of Grief And Wisdom, Then They Settle Down In Contented Residence In Your Heart.

Of The Yamacraw Children, I Can Say Little. I Don't Think I Changed The Quality Of Their Lives Significantly Or Altered The Inexorable Fact That They Were Imprisoned By The Very Circumstance Of Their Birth.