Red and raw like my heart, pried from your's, the two beating, no longer together, but a thousand miles between them when only yesterday they thumped in unison.

I swallow any sort of apology. "screwing your neighbor." There. Said it. React, okay? pregnant pause becomes three weeks overdue. Four weeks. Time for a C-section. What? Oh, Kaeleigh, I'm so sorry. Are you sure...?

Always before, I just said no, left it solidly there. I waver now. I want to share everything with him. Want to know what he knows, feel what he feels, share the same space he's in.

You are a gift to all who know you, whether or not they realize it. If they don't, they are blind. You have a special place in this world. All you have to do is find it. Do not give up on yourself, or the truths you have realized. Do not give in to those who could crush your dreams like nutshells. And never turn away from forever love.

Alone, there is only the person inside. I've grown to like her better than the stuck-up husk of me. Alone, there is no perfect daughter, no gifted high school junior, no Kristina Georgia Snow. There is only Bree." (Ellen Hopkins)

In fact, since the accident, Mom doesn't love anyone. She is marble. Beautiful. Frigid. Easily stained by her family. What's left of us anyway. We are corpses. At first, we sought rebirth. But resurrection devoid of her love has made us zombies. We get up every morning, skip breakfast, hurry off to work or school. For in those other places, we are more at home. And sometimes we stagger beneath the weight of grief, the immensity of aloneness.

Some people never find the right kind of love. You know, the kind that steals your breath away, like diving into snowmelt. The kind that jolts your heart, sets it beating apace, an anxious hiccuping of hummingbird wings