I'm Good With Words, But Not The

The Stretch Of Years Leaves None Unmarked: The Blissful Sense Of Youthful Invincibility Peels Away And Responsibility Brings Its Weight To Bear.

Hope, How She Had Grown To Hate The Word. It Was An Insideious Seed Planted Inside A Person's Soul, Surviving Covertly On Little Tending, Then Flowering So Spectacularly That None Could Help But Cherish It.

It Was The Sibling Thing, I Suppose. I Was Fascinated By The Intricate Tangle Of Love And Duty And Resentment That Tied Them Together. The Glances They Exchanged; The Complicated Balance Of Power Established Over Decades; The Games I Would Never Play With Rules I Would Never Fully Understand. And Perhaps That Was Key: They Were Such A Natural Group That They Made Me Feel Remarkably Singular By Comparison. To Watch Them Together Was To Know Strongly, Painfully, All That I'd Been Missing.

Reluctance To Begin Is Quick To Befriend Procrastination. . . .

True Love, It's Like An Illness. I Never Understood It Before. In Books And Plays. Poems. I Never Understood What Drove Otherwise Intelligent, Right-thinking People To Do Such Extravagant, Irrational Things. Now I Do. It's An Illness. You Can Catch It When You Least Expect. There's No Known Cure. And Sometimes, In Its Most Extreme, It's Fatal.