Some Things, You Know, If You Say

That's The Kind Of Death That Frightens Me. The Shadow Of Death Slowly, Slowly Eats Away At The Region Of Life, And Before You Know It Everything's Dark And You Can't See, And The People Around You Think Of You As More Dead Than Alive.

Silence. How Long It Lasted, I Couldn't Tell. It Might Have Been Five Seconds, It Might Have Been A Minute. Time Wasn't Fixed. It Wavered, Stretched, Shrank. Or Was It Me That Wavered, Stretched, And Shrank In The Silence? I Was Warped In The Folds Of Time, Like A Reflection In A Fun House Mirror.

I'm All Alone, But I'm Not Lonely.

Those Five Fingers And That Palm Were Like A Display Case Crammed Full Of Everything I Wanted To Know--and Everything I Had To Know. By Taking My Hand, She Showed Me What These Things Were. That Within The Real World, A Place Like This Existed. In The Space Of Those Ten Seconds I Became I Tiny Bird, Fluttering In The Air, The Wind Rushing By. From High In The Sky I Could See A Scene Far Away. It Was So Far Off I Couldn't Make It Out Clearly, Yet Something Was There, And I Knew That Someday I Would Travel To That Place.

What's Really Important Here," I Whispered Loudly To Myself,"is Not The Big Things Other People Have Thought Up, But The Small Things You, Yourself Have