I Forgive You," I Said. I Said

Before, They Had Never Found Themselves Broken Together. Usually, It Was One Needing The Other But Not Both Needing Each Other, And So There Had Been A Way, By Touching, To Borrow From The Stronger One's Strength.

No One On The Street Thought Anything Of The Downtown Girl Dressed In Black Who Had Paused In The Middle Of Midtown Foot Traffic. In Her Art Student Camouflage She Could Walk The Entire Length Of Manhattan And, If Not Blend In, Be Classified And Therefore Ignored.

Learn A Language Of Another Country And Then You Can Go To That Country: A Place Where The Problems Of Your Family Will Not Follow. A Language They Do Not Speak.

It's Something That I Know How To Do Because I Taught For A Very Long Time, So I Can Do It, And I Feel A Responsibility To Do It - For Instance, In This Situation, Where I'm Touring Specifically For This Period Of Time. But Most Writers Are Not Public People. There Are A Few Writers Out There Who Really Enjoy It And Are Good At It, And Can Both Work And Do That At The Same Time, But I'm Not One Of Those People.

I Couldn't Help But Think, As I Watched Him, Of The Barrels Of Toxic Fluids That Had Accrued Behind Hal's Bike Shop Where The Scrub Lining The Railroad Tracks Had Offered Local Companies Enough Cover To Dump A Stray Contaner Or Two. Everything Had Been Sealed Up, But Things Were Beginning To Leak Out. I Had Come To Both Pity And Respect Len In The Years Since My Mother Left. He Followed The Physical To Try To Understand Things That Were Impossible To Comphrehend. In That, I Could See, He Was Like Me.