Byron paused on his walk. He was sure there was a girl crying in that little alcove behind the bushes, but he wasn't sure if he should intrude. He saw the retreating back of one of the bigger football players and decided to forge ahead through the shield of green.

"Hey," his tone was soothing and served to calm the tempestuous storm which raged behind the girl's dewy eyes, though she started like a wild deer when she heard his footsteps.

"Oh." She tried to dash the water from her cheeks.

If you've been wondering where I've been with my book, Redeemed on Tucker Street; well, here I am! I have finished the first great movement of the plot, and so I have been editing and polishing. I'm only about a quarter of the way done, but I like to work my longer writings in pieces. I also have added more of a preface and also a dedications page, since this work should definitely not be entirely credited to me!

I realize (though there's no standards-violation) that this chapter is going to be against some of the members' morals -- yet I still feel like it's an important scene, because it engages the complexity of having a very close male-female friendship like the one this memoir celebrates. And it relates to a very profound "reason" for the friendship, which will be revealed at the end. So I didn't censor it out. Thanks for reading! Love, Sarah

-------------------------

Travels
I grew up a nomad, wondering as I went,
With backpack over shoulder and shoes well spent.
I've seen Mesopotamian graveyards where dust fell from the Ishango Bone,
And trudged Mediterranean shores where Nap found the Rosetta Stone.

There's nothing like old Stonehenge at the midwinter heirophany,
Or late noons at Giza, shadows long like Modiglianis.
The snowflakes carved in Moscow are each a precious little fractal.
Who's tasted cacao where Aztecs toasted their own Quetzocoatl?

“For all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these; it might have been.”
I could only relate to it. It might have been possible that my family could have stayed together. It might have been plausible that my father could have found a job that would supply for us.
But it didn’t.

Deep in the woods,
There’s a little wooden house,
And nobody lives there, but dreams.
And the laughter of childhood,
Floats on the breeze,
And splashes through crystal streams.

Find me beneath the old maple,
Let’s fight a few monsters today,
And return to the hall,
When the quest finally ends,
And we’ll sit with a fire ablaze.
Knowing well that we have
Something fleeting and sad,
That we’ll hold for as long as we can.
As long as we can.

I remember when we watched the sunrise over the river,
And we imagined dragons flying above, making the clouds into oceans.
The sky seemed to split apart, and fire rained down over us,
And we spilled into a new world that we made.

I remember when we walked through green hallways,
The trees making vaulted ceilings to our palace of fantasy.
We were dressed in all the trappings of wild princesses,
And we raced through the hidden tunnels of the new world we made.

Burst Bubble

When it comes to origins, there are two different ways to think about things: religious or scientific. Religious ideas represent blind faith in an outdated sacred text. Scientific ideas about origins, however, are made in light of cold hard facts. Even religious people have bought into this idea – that their religious thinking applies only to their faith. When it comes to origins and other aspects of the real world, scientific thinking must take over.

I fastened up my shirt. It was a shade of salmon, and the buttons were small—actual wood. It was some men’s outdoors brand, with a duck on the collar—a shirt obviously meant for fishing. A day with hot sun beating down on a flaked, grey-blue rowboat. A cooler from the eighties, brandishing a flaked red label, filled with ice cubes and canned beers. Pop the tab, throw one back, living the dream of a middle-aged native midwesterner.