I saw the movie, he said. I know what it's about. Listen to this. When girls get to be about twelve or so - he leaned toward us - their tits bleed.

There are some books that reached through the noise of life to grab you by the collar and speak only of the truest things.

So do boys and men announce their intentions. They cover you like a sarcophagus lid. And call it love.

Bubble gum angels swooped from top margins or scraped their wings between teeming paragraphs, maidens with golden hair dripped sea blue tears into the books spine, grape-colored whales spouted blood around a newspaper item (pasted in) listing arrivals to the endangered spieces list. Six hatchlings cried from shattered shells near an entry made on Easter. Cecilia had filled the pages with a profusion of colors and curlicues, candyland ladders and striped shamrocks.

The trees like lungs filling with air. My sister, the mean one, pulling my hair.

She could become a spinster, like Emily Dickinson, writing poems full of dashes and brilliance, and never gaining weight.

I live my own life and nurse my own wounds. It's not the best way to live. But it's the way I am.