Yesterday, a poet friend asked me, why do you write? His spindly fingers tapped the window beside us. And I don’t mean motivation. I mean something like, your reason on the inside. I mean your desire. Today, when I considered this contribution for a series on Buch Märchen, I received my answer: I write for everyday magic. And I don’t mean the enchantment that befalls a writer when lulled into another world through a perfectly crafted sentence, or the moment a reader awakens from the end of a tale, only to find that morning has seeped into night while the steady turn of pages whispered incantations—although those things have their own magic. I write to honor the magic that beckons a story onward. I write for the everyday magic that spreads its roots through the dark substratum upon which every story dwells: stories written over hallowed ground, in the thick of a strange and lush forest, at the rim of a rabbit hole. I write to create that state of suspension where the extraordinary is not received with a double take and a hearty dose of suspicion, but instead is commonplace (as when, in my stories, children are gifted with uncanny powers, women summon their beloved from the dead, and men quest into unknown places). This sort of wonder in a tale is no small thing: I would argue that it gives us hope in a world that often lacks a desire to stretch beyond convention. And yet, among us, enchantment occurs all the time, if we welcome it. Someone else once said—probably another poet—that we never find anything that we aren’t looking for. So, when writing fairy tales, perhaps I am like a looking glass in sunlight, wanting to seize that glint of magic in the everyday.