Because stories are spells; they change things. When they hook us and reel us into their magic, they change us. It’s stories that will save us, in the end. Not just the stories we read or tell, or the stories we want to be in, but the ones that live inside us and the ones we live inside.

— Sharon Blackie, Hagitude

•••

You ask what I do in the comfy chair,
laptop in lap, for so long, deep into
tonight-becomes-early-tomorrow.

In the dark they arrive without
distraction, the ones who people
this story written in fits and starts

for more than a decade, who’ve
never really left my mind, who
seem as deeply embedded

in my soul as any dead loved one,
though these beings have never
breathed, except in my imagination

where I see them walking, hear
them talking like old friends. This
is a novel still trying to be born,

and I’m in the last trimester, the
ready-to-push stage, putting the
finishing touches on their lives,

revising for the third time,
which feels like doing math
(and I don’t math), checking

ages and hair colors and details
on a wonky timeline back and forth
from the 1950s to the 1970s.

And when they are delivered
unto the world, they’ll no
longer belong to me, as any

parent can tell you. With luck,
they’ll make friends who’ll read
about them, decide how to

feel about them, and some of
those people will tell me how
they feel about these fictional

characters, who, with luck,
will become real to others,
not just me.

•••

(for Caro and El and Lil and Ma and all those in “Three Sisters Antiques,” whom I thank for coming)