Many factors have shaped who I am as a poet: growing up in the heart of the disability community (as a child of leaders in the disability civil rights movement), being the daughter of a philosopher, my own struggles with chronic illness, queerness, motherhood, and my enduring sense of connection to the natural world. But my original introduction to poetry came through my matrilineal grandmother. As a child, she read me poems—her own, Millay’s, others. And though she had about her a kind of sadness, the poems seemed to ease her rough patches. Once, she said to me as I watched her paint, “Whatever they do to you, get it all down.” I have kept her close all the way through. I have been following some original spark of expression since youth. I write to make music and to sing back to the darkness. I write to listen, to speak, to praise, to grieve, and perhaps most importantly to transform what can seem impossible, to hold the exquisiteness of ordinary life up to the light, to break bread with the mystery.