No child should ever be too sad to play.

And me, standing under the splintered night, catching fractured glimpses into the black behind the black, hearing the prayers of stars, the angry whispers of the dark summer night.Its voice cracks,on your name.My eyes close,on your name.

If you stand right at the edge of the night sky, some place where one o__lock leaves to meet two, the breeze will carry your words up to the stars. And they__l swallow your secrets until its time to hand them over to the truths in the sky- the ones that draw maps in the black. They carve their answers into the backs of my hands, the grooves of the words running deep in my palms.

His calm and gentle tone was like an anchor in a ferocious sea, keeping me from drifting into a current of heartache.

The amusements of life, he argued, should be accepted with the same philosophy as its ills. ("The Striding Place")

There were happy days, with watermelon, and sad days of whiskey.