Swimming Lessons

by Claire Fuller

I’m sure I’ll write things you’ll claim I imagined, dreamed, made up; but this is how I see it. This, here, is my truth.

Writing does not exist unless there is someone to read it, and each reader will take something different from a novel, from a chapter, from a line.

“A book becomes a living thing only when it interacts with a reader.

“It’s difficult to live with both hope and grief.”

Why don’t I just talk to you? Because you aren’t here, because even if you were, you wouldn’t listen.

Is imposing our will on nature wrong? All that work to keep the garden as I want it—the weeding, the pruning, and the mowing. Perhaps it would be more honest, more truthful, to let the land slip back to how it wants to be.

‘What the eye doesn’t see and the mind doesn’t know doesn’t exist.’”