On a too-bright, too-warm-too-sudden day in April, I finished Just Kids. I could've finished it to the last page on the last leg of my bus commute with the setting sun lighting the serrated edge of the book but I didn't. More like I couldn't, because to be choked up and in tears in public transit is an experience I only imagined but never hoped to experience. The book on my lap, the James Jean postcard repurposed as a bookmark slicing the flesh of my arm, nudging me to keep on going.

But I can't. Can't, as in, I am inconsolable. Can't, as in the stone of loss lodged in my throat keeps me from it. Can't, as in, I don't want to.

I don't listen to Patti Smith as a musician/poet. This is the first of her work that I've read, and judging from my enjoyment of her language, this won't be my last. The clarity of her narrative voice provides more than an illumination to the artist's journey. Her relationship with her art, Robert, and Robert's art leaves me gasping, perhaps for want of it and for the delight of ever getting to know about it.

Anyway, wow, I'm shook.