"I had a boyfriend named Johnny who wrote me love poems - good ones. I called him up, said I was going to kill myself, left the phone off the hook, took my fifty aspirin, and realized it was a mistake," the girl read. "Then I went out to get some milk, which my mother had asked me to do before I took the aspirin."

It was nice. Her voice was nice. She had a slight lisp, but it didn't matter. The way she read, the way she spoke, held all who heard under a spell. It was impossible to interrupt her, pun intended, and as you and the homeless sat there, in a circle on the cold ground, no one said a word. The winter air bit at your exposed hands, but you barely noticed, too focused on the cadence of her voice and the unexpected humor in the dark passage she'd chosen. One elderly man with a tattered coat wiped at his eye when she paused, and a teenager with a backpack pulled tighter around their shoulders leaned forward slightly, as if afraid to miss a word.