Drinker of Ink

by Shannon Castleton

Even if I’d said his name in Tagalog, however, my tone would have given my heart away. In any language, I would say Peter like a classic film star to her lover, like Juliet calling Romeo from her balcony.

I think every baked good and poem is a world. When you create one, you hand a person a view of the stars within you. When you eat someone’s bread or read someone’s poem, you walk the roads inside them—their memories, their joys, their sadnesses.

“It is terrifying to be a parent. To choose to behave one way with your child, and then watch what comes of it. It is like planting a garden with aster and dynamite, but you never know which, and either sprouts up at the oddest times to remind you of what you did well or poorly.”

Poems and birds and ladybugs and nourishment—any small thing in this world might fill you.