A poem is the breath that was taken away, and a short story but poetry spun and woven into prose. A novel is a puzzle whose pieces are stitched of short stories’ fabric, and the great works of literature are those whose pages hold many novels, told all at once, a beautiful, perfect chaos composed of countless breaths, each ringing true and pure and profound. And thus is life returned to us, captured in timeless essence and bound by something stronger than book glue, more powerful than pressed ink: the need to share that which overwhelms the heart and overflows the soul. This is why we write, because we long back for the breath that the universe has taken from us. This is why we read, in the hope that another has found the same.