On days when the forest feels too thick,

the leaves too broad, too dense,

and my machete is too heavy to wield,

I climb a ladder rung by rung up to my treehouse.

Oh, this is big!

When we were working on our book, I really cared about our cover design. I wanted people to read our book and I knew that I had a lot to overcome.

I was a first-time writer, it was poetry, and it was about death. These are fairly huge hurdles in the book world!

“You won’t understand.”

To be clear, she didn’t say, “You might not understand.” or “It’s tricky to understand.” She said, “You won’t understand.” She was another student in my organic chemistry class in 1992 and she was telling me about the poetry written by her mother, a well-respected poet. She knew I was acing chemistry, so I didn’t take it as a jab at my intelligence. It felt more like she was describing a club, and I wasn’t invited. Door slammed, no entry. I wasn’t welcome.