- Well, if you love that other guy, you're gonna hate this.

(audience laughing) (Sarah chuckling) My story is one of the short ones this evening.

It was written when I had the flu, and I deleted the app that I submitted it on.

I was so confident I was going to be chosen to read this evening, so please enjoy this short piece titled "Lucy."

"The day after Abraham Lincoln's 194th birthday, I became the 15th emancipated minor in the state of Virginia.

Until that point, I had been a New York-born Navy brat, a gifted child, and a runaway.

I had one sole possession, standing where Edgar Cayce had once claimed center of the universe, a good book, a 'Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir' of Lucille Clifton, published and authored out of the same Niagara as me.

A 'Good Woman' kept in my back pocket.

She became my travel companion, my sister at my side, a guide.

She gave me a quiet reputation on trains and planes.

She introduced me to friends in museums, and galleries, and parks.

She sparked up conversations in steamy coffee shops.

(Sarah sighing) She taught me tough love by going missing from time to time only to be exactly where she was, just as I was.

She gave me eye-opening patience, (chuckles) and focus going up, but mostly down icy Colorado roads.

We were searching for enlightenment.

All I wanted to give her was Tokyo, and Paris, and Los Angeles.

We found the golden shores of California together.

We prayed in Spanish missions, we drank and ate at salty taco stands.

We scaled her amber mountains and swallowed up her famous clam chowder.

I felt the sudden need to know everything about Lucille.

She had taught at Santa Cruz, so close.

Sheer joy and curiosity had brought me all this way, but this was no longer her home.

How do I achieve what I'm looking for?

What would Lou do?

Hoping for a meeting, for guidance, for resolve, perhaps just to touch the hem of her garment, the one who nestled me to her spine all these years.

There's a reason they say, 'Never meet your heroes,' because if you did, you would never leave.

Lucille Clifton died in Baltimore, February 13th, 2010, same day as her mother.

Same day as today.

The last dog-eared page of her book told me it was time to turn back around and go find Virginia, the land where my two feet first touched free.

'You have to do yourself,' she says.

The East called again, and I took the leap.

Suddenly, the land of my youth had blossomed, opened up to the native sun.

I could recognize and reconsider features I never appreciated before.

Ah, sweet humidity.

(chuckling) To be happy where you are.

I had spent so long running away from my home, I had forgotten who she was.

I met a man on the eve of his father's funeral.

Had I met him before Lucy, I wouldn't have known how to do like the Dahomey woman do, like Lucille.

I gathered all my pieces, my loose materials, my tools, and I told him I would stand by his side.

Good women don't run away.

They're supposed to be exactly where they are.

They embrace the heat and ash and stone, and they turn themselves into a home."

Thank you.

(audience applauding and cheering)