Random, well-placed marks make you unique. Like a well-chosen word, the mole on the tip of your rounded nose, perfects the sentence of your face. When you were born your face was swollen, squished by my internal organs. Though you cried and screamed every night, your birthmarks faded silently. Through disappearing milia, your singular mole emerged. New moles arrive everyday, dot-by-dot constellations multiplied despite the lotions we spread like glue so the sun won’t stick.

I often wonder why we don’t have a group memory Why we can’t remember what happened to our ancestors how they lived, loved, and died what they did with their time What we have is writing, art, and language, shared with understanding and intention their existence and interpretations threatened by one despot or the next changed during transcription, changed by time, and our ability to understand what we have inherited is subject to the limits of our own imaginations our

As promised last week, here is one of the poems from my little purple notebook. In my heart, I am a poet. But the words won’t come when bidden. They come in the night when the world is asleep when my mind is empty and quiet as the room. Warm cat purring, down comforter comforting, a blanket of sleep squeezing tight. Awake, the words fail to delight. No longer profound. #littlepurplenotebook #poem

Here are Emily’s answers to my questions (in poems and prose!): Emily Jiang: All my characters have a bit of me in them, even the villains.  It’s my personal opinion that the best stories have villains that feel like real characters equal to the main characters.  Because the most compelling antagonists should have motivations that feel real.  While I love my protagonists, I often actively try to make them different from me.  Typically the characters I most identify with are t

Wondering about the rest of that lovely Shelley poem from last weekend’s episode of Inspector Lewis? Here it is (from Bartelby.com): Love’s Philosophy by Percy Bysshe Shelley The fountains mingle with the river And the rivers with the ocean, The winds of heaven mix for ever With a sweet emotion; Nothing in the world is single, All things by a law divine In one another’s being mingle- Why not I with thine? See the mountains kiss high heaven, And the waves clasp one another; No