I couldn't imagine what it would be like to be one of so many, to have not just parents and siblings but cousins and aunts and uncles, an entire tribe to claim as your own. Maybe you would feel lost in the crowd. Or sheltered by it. Whatever the case, one things was for sure: like it or not, you'd never be alone.

Donneven, Bettaquit and Mmmhmmmm

If you didn't love him, this never would have happened. But you did. And accepting that love and everything that followed it is part of letting it go.

She was just a shell of her former self, functioning and talking but hardly alive.

Maybe I'd just figured out there were some things you were better off not knowing

Like so many before them, they didn't care that my dad was only the messenger. They still wanted to shoot him.

In a way, I was almost happy to see her. The worst part of me, out in the flesh. Blinking back at me in the dim light, daring me to call her a name other than my own.