I watch the ashes swim around like dandelion puffs, making swirls where bodies and walls once stood.

This time as we ascend, I watch the world sinking below us. I watch the way the city fades into sand that gets washed by the ocean.

I see an ocean that’s spilled out of a wineglass, its body clear and sparkling and folding over itself. I see a ribbon of sand.

He talks softly, patiently, as I sit on the window ledge and watch boats with colorful triangles for sails scratch the ocean.

It’s a world worth fighting for. Set fire to the broken pieces; start anew.

Childhood is a long, long road, from which that dark whispering forest of death seems an impossible destination.

It isn’t a perfect place. There are no perfect places. But nobody cares about perfection when there are sand castles to build and kites to chase, children that are being born, old hearts that are giving in.

I wanted so badly to tell him, but something about that entire night seemed so beautiful, so bizarre, that I didn't trust it with my secrets.

I wipe at her cheeks with the cuff of my green sweater because it’s the softest thing I can think of. It catches her tears without absorbing them, and they hang between the fibers like stars.