This book is dedicated to my family. I hope that art is an act of unconditional love. And my family taught me what unconditional love is. Mom, you love with mythic power—you’re my spirit guide, my healer, my larger than life. I have never and will never encounter another human being of such proportions. Your mind, your passions, they barely fit on earth. And of course, it was you (who else could it be?) who gave me the fire, Prometheus—of course it was you who taught me to write. You alone, starting with the alphabet and going up through ten-page short stories with four-syllable words. Victoria, my wife, somewhere, in my time of knowing you, the eye contact changed, and the uncrossable chasm was crossed—you became family. And not just family, but a self for me to be that is better than my wildest imagination. Your love has made me as close to whole as I’ve ever been, and I do not fear the dark anymore. I think heaven is just an eternity of us telling one another jokes. Dad, you kept my metaphors clear and simple, and kept my mind skeptical but never cynical, and always treated my small emotions with respect, since they were emotions. This is all I think good poetry is. My departed stepfather Alan, you never for a moment stopped demanding my mind and heart rise to the occasion, and you loved me as blindly as blood would’ve had you. You paved the way for my complete embrace of Victoria, in teaching me that family is chosen. My stepfather Frank, you are my body when my body is too weak, and my spirit when my spirit is too weak. You are very literally carrying my body over this last dark threshold of cancer. You are everything Jesus wanted people to be. My sister Torrie, my other mommy, I never left your hip. Alan taught me family is chosen. You taught me that every family member is all roles to all others when the family is loving enough. And Skye, dear sister so like me, the family’s only other artist, the only other to walk so close to death, where would I be without the example of your sweetness and mirth, without watching you, at every turn, use creativity as the antidote to suffering?

There are many people to thank. I have been richer in love and support than anyone I’ve ever met. I’m sorry if I missed you on this list of thank-yous. It’s just a partial roll call of the many ships that sailed to Troy with me.