" I keep turning away from speaking of your letter. I feel — to speak of it would be to contain what it did to me, to make it small. I don't want to do that. I suppose in some ways she I 'm more Garden' s child than she knows. Even poetry, which breaks language into meaning — poetry ossifies time, the way trees do. What’s supple, whipping, soft, and fresh grows hard, grows armor. If I could touch you, put my in finger to your temple and sink you into me the way Garden does — perhaps then. But I would never.
So this letter instead. "

― Amal El-Mohtar , This Is How You Lose the Time War