These things, she felt, were not to be passed around like disingenuous party favors. She kept an honor code with her journals and her poems. 'Inside, inside,' she would whisper quietly to herself when she felt the urge to tell.

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

He was beginning to understand: You were treated special and, later, something horrible would be told to you.

People grow up by living.

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

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

Last night it had been my father who had finally said it: "She’s never coming home." A clear and easy piece of truth that everyone who had ever known me had accepted. But he needed to say it, and she needed to hear him say it.