Some early readers have asked me, “What’s with all the pictures in your book?” The simple answer is that books with beauty draw me in. I’m very visual. And you know we’re all still children at heart. We like pictures. To some, they may feel like unexpected guests in a house of words. But for me, they’re not separate. They are kin. They offer a way to feel the texture of bark, the velvet of a petal, or the vastness of the sky. They are a way to feel the words. They’re an invitation. A pause. A silent poem alongside the written words. Sometimes, the eye needs its own feast. They are invitations to linger, to allow the resonance of the words to settle and deepen, perhaps to stir a forgotten memory within the reader, a parallel landscape held within their own being. They ground the abstract in the concrete, the philosophical in the particular. They are another voice in the chorus, a visual poetry that speaks to the heart in ways that words alone sometimes cannot. I hope they add to your experience as well. Thank you for being here.