One summer night while our family sat on the deck of our home, Leslie gazed up at a thin slice of crescent moon and said, simply, "Moon torn." She wasn't yet two.

Poet, dancer, daughter, sister, friend, wife. Leslie was stubborn, willful, assertive, loyal, generous, joyous and funny.  

When asked by her dad, as a three-year-old headed out the door, where she was going, she replied as only Leslie could, "Just goin'." That was Leslie, just going her own way.

Several years later, at seven, she presented her family with "Leslie's Bill of Rights." Among other things, she would:

"Make up my own mind."

"Say what I want."

"Write what I want."

"Do what I want."

"Wear what I want."

"Go with whom I want if I am invited or not."

That was Leslie: Indomitable will and spirit. It was what made her grandparents call her their "macho girl."

At 15, Leslie went to Galway, Ireland, where she joined a workshop of university students under the instructorship of Irish poet Michael Gorman, who dubbed her one of the best in the class and a natural poet.

Months later, Leslie dropped out of high school after a counselor who had placed her in a parenting class Leslie didn't want or need suggested, "You're a smart girl. Why don't you just drop out and get your GED."

Leslie did just that, making one of the highest scores in the state on her GED that year and graduating ahead of what would have been her graduating class.

At 18, Leslie once again went her own way, eloping with Derek Allen, an Air Force sergeant 12 years her senior, on a sunset cruise of the Schooner Western Union out of Key West. Derek remains a steadfast member of my family.

Shortly before her death in a car accident, Leslie wrote the following:

I hear you, Leslie, every day. You are in everything I do.