I tried to take solace in Holiday, our dog. I missed him in a way I hadn't yet let myself miss my mother and father, my sister and brother. That way of missing would mean that I had accepted that I would never be with them again; it might sound silly but I didn't believe it, would not believe it.

The shadow of years was not as big on his small body. He knew I was away . But when people left they always came back.

In my 20s, I railed against anything 'spiritual', I thought it was all crap.

I missed her then but it was an odd sort of missing because by then, I knew the meaning of forever.

I tried to take solace in Holiday, our dog. I missed him in a way I hadn't yet let myself miss my mother and father, my sister and brother. That way of missing would mean that I had accepted that I would never be with them again; it might sound silly but I didn't believe it, would not believe it.

At the tips of the feathers there is air and at their base: blood. I hold up bones; I wish like broken glass they could court light....still I try to place these pieces back together, to set them firm, to make murdered girls live again.

Like snowflakes,' Franny said,'none of them the same and yet each one, from where we stand, exactly like the one before