You could not be filled with hate and be beautiful. Like any other girl, I wanted to be beautiful. But I was filled with hate.

My name is Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered.

"When the dead are done with the living, the living can go on to other things," Franny said. "What about the dead?" I asked. "Where do we go?"

So there are cakes and pillows and colors galore, but underneath this more obvious patchwork quilt are places like a quiet room where you can go and hold someone's hand and not have to say anything.

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.

Hey, Ocean Eyes,” my father said. “Where’d you go on us?

Then a little voice in him said, Let go, let go, let go