WEBVTT

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All right.

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I'm going to shift
gears a little bit.

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So the residency that I was on
was the John and Renee Grisham

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Writer-in-Residence at the
University of Mississippi.

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And John Grisham, who went to
Ole Miss, donated the house

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and supports the grant.

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So it's pretty incredible
to have-- it was 77 acres.

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It's one of those
places that you

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can't find it with Google Maps.

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They took it off Google Maps.

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But this is--

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I like to say that this is one
thing that not a lot of people

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can say.

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I Slept in John Grisham's Bed.

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A bed on stilts, queen sized,
with a well in the center

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I always roll into.

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White-pilled sheets,
threadbare, and thinning.

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I worked hard to earn that bed
and the room surrounding it,

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Meaning I must have written
words once that meant something.

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Big, wide windows look out
onto a cluster of magnolias

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that never lose their leaves.

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No blinds.

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I like to let the light in.

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I imagine John Grisham plotting
out a best-seller, legal pad

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in hand.

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Kids like mine bouncing
on a mattress high enough

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to touch the ceiling fan.

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This bed I have shared with
many authors and lovers,

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Who also wrote words
that meant something.

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They slept here too.

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Loved here, on this
bed, that scoots away

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from the wooden headboard
from too much movement.

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Can't help but laugh at the
bedroom door that does not lock.

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Sliding a chair in front of
it for privacy or the attic

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we were afraid to enter,

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The creak of the
floorboards above our heads.

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And when I'd think my big
thoughts about the world,

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Time travel or black
holes or God or death,

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I'd come to the bed's blank page
against the shimmer of sky glow.

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