Miss Emily: A Novel

Oh chimerical, perplexing, beautiful words! I love to use the pretty ones like blades and the ugly ones to console. I use dark ones to illuminate and bright ones to mourn. And, when I feel as if a tomahawk has scalped me, I know it is poetry then and I leave it be.

“You might die, Emily,” he says. “How would I remember you?” “With ease, Father,” I say. “Remember that I was small like a pipit and my hair was chestnut bright and my eyes were like the brandy left in the glass when the party ends. Remember that I was a kangaroo beside the beauty of my sister and the handsomeness of my brother. Won't that do?”

Under its foliage and roses, my wallpaper is filled with arrows, each of them pointing the same way around the walls of my room, from east to west and on eastward again. The arrows tell me to complete my circle as I begin it. For life — and writing — is a never-ending loop of begin, push on, end, begin again.