Betty

“No water is ever at rest.”

I know now what he meant because the ripples of his death have weakened. But the waters will never be still.

I was glad for their ghosts to be in that house. I was glad because to be haunted is not always such a terrible thing.

There is no supernatural hardship to our life. Only our fear that there is.

“A girl comes of age against the knife, Betty.” She softly tucked my hair behind my ears before kissing me on the forehead. “But the woman she becomes must decide if the blade will cut deep enough to rip her apart or if she will find the strength to leap with her arms out and dare herself to fly in a world that seems to break like glass around her. May you have the strength.”

A man with hands like my father’s was a man who had built his home out of star and sky. He had held on to the throb of life and abandoned comforts. You can’t do that sort of thing and not expect your hands to get dirty. That’s how you know you’re doing it right.

“Don’t you feel the flames lickin’ up your calves? Don’t you feel the heat around your heart? Don’t you feel your eyes meltin’ outta their sockets? Don’t you know, you’re already burnin’?”

She sleeps with her teddy bear. She draws with crayons and thinks the world will be as sweet to her as the ribbon in her hair. Imagine bein’ a five-year-old girl and your brother—the boy who’s supposed to protect you—starts eatin’ your fingertips until he’s eatin’ your arms until he’s eatin’ your whole damn body.

At five years old, the little girl cries, the wolf has arrived to eat her alive.

I had come to realize that buried secrets are just seeds that grow more sin.

Story always has been a way to rewrite the truth. But sometimes to be responsible for the truth is to prepare oneself to say it.