You can tell when something's not moving forward anymore. When the doubts you have about it don't go away.

She wanted out of the decorating scheme.

But in the end it wasn't up to me. The bigs things never are. Birth, I mean, and death. And love. And what love bequeaths to us before we're born.

Scars crossed her welded wrists.

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.

Every letter was a love letter.