Learn A Language Of Another Country And

I Was Trying To Prove To Them And To Myself That I Was Still Who I Had Always Been. I Was Beautiful, If Fat. I Was Smart, If Loud. I Was Good, If Ruined.

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.

These Things, She Felt, Were Not To Be Passed Around Like Disingenuous Party Favors. She Kept An Honor Code With Her Journals And Her Poems. 'inside, Inside,' She Would Whisper Quietly To Herself When She Felt The Urge To Tell.

She Was Unaware That She Was Somewhat Of A Celebrity Up In Heaven. I Had Told People About Her, What She Did, How She Observed Moments Of Silence Up And Down The City And Wrote Small Individual Prayers In Her Journal, And The Story Had Travelled So Quickly That Women Lined Up To Know She Had Found Where They’d Been Killed. She Had Fans In Heaven..... Meanwhile, For Us, She Was Doing Important Work, Work That Most People On Earth Were Too Frightened Even Too Contemplate.

My Grandmother Stepped Back Into The Kitchen To Get Their Drinks. I Had Come To Love Her More After Death Than I Ever Had On Earth. I Wish I Could Say That In That Moment In The Kitchen She Decided To Quit Drinking, But I Now Saw That Drinking Was A Part Of What Made Her Who She Was. If The Worst Of What She Left On Earth Was A Legacy Of Inebriated Support, It Was A Good Legacy In My Book. ~susie's Grandmother, Lynn Pgs 315-316