When I am old and grey and full of sleep

and nodding by the lamp, I will take down a book from my shelf and apologize to Yeats for putting his work in vain, and pour myself a cup of tea (yes, tea, not coffee), and remember all the chilled milk teas I have consumed in my lifetime, and wonder why I had never started on the book of fairy tales I had planned my entire life to write. 

Yes, my entire life. 

The moment my dad handed me my first book of fairy tales, I knew it was what I wanted to create, too. And then, I met the Grimm brothers. Then, Cupid and Psyche, and Daphne, with Apollo at her heels. And then, real life came along, soon after, with JD Salinger, and Kafka, and company. Good thing women like George Eliot and AS Byatt were in the wings to help me keep the faith. Oh, but Nabokov, shoot.

So, here I am, paying homage to all the kings and sorcerers, and princes who had wrecked my perception of reality, but most of all, to all the dysfunctional individuals who had helped rebuild my psyche. 

Oh, who am I fooling. 

But, yes, someday I will read Finnegans Wake. I love Alice to bits, after all.