I didn't write anything here yesterday; today is for Toni Morrison. She left us yesterday.

I can't remember not having a Toni Morrison book in my house, my mother's house, growing up. She was there, as much as King or Straub or Oates or the rest of that particular generation. A constant.

Beloved, when she sent that out to the world, came at a time when I was moving on. Because of school, to "literature", and at that particular point, Toni's work wasn't quite yet "literature". That came later.

Then, she was an itinerant professor, a woman of letters. But not yet the Nobel Prize Winner. That too would come later. Mom bought Beloved as soon as she saw the trade paper edition. I came to it later, after Toni's Prize, when I wanted to discover where an old friend had gone to in my absence.

I haven't kept up with Toni's work after Beloved, other than her occasional letters to us the broader public. But she was always there, just as she always had been. Always will be, oh this magic we do.

I believe Toni Morrison read herself into existence. Yes, writer, yes editor, yes dreams sent to Heaven. But in her work I see most of all: a fellow reader. Engaged, terrified by, lost in, awed in the fact of the words, the story, the stories.

Before I wrote this, I went and dug up something I'd remembered as being fairly short, a quick read from Toni. She wrote an introduction to Huck Finn, once upon a time. I remembered learning something from Toni in that piece. Of how a writer tangles with another's work.

How she tangles with it, again and again. From fear, to understanding. And then dives into it all again. Because what was and what is and what may yet be are not the same; she tangled with Huck Finn, and learned something.

Taught me: of reading, and worrying over it. And then sitting down, so that the words should come and hold these things together. I don't know what tomorrow will be, not having Toni there.

But I am glad that there are words from her that I have yet to read.