It was a bird. A bird struggling through stickiness: a bird coated in paint, floundering in its nest, splashing color everywhere.
Red. Red. Red.
Dozens of them: black feathers coated thickly with crimson-colored paint, fluttering among the branches.
Red means run.

Promise me we'll stay together, okay?" His eyes are once again the clear blue of a perfectly transparent pool. They are eyes to swim in, to float in, forever. "You and me."
"I promise," I say.
Behind us the door creaks open, and I turn around, expecting Raven, just as a voice cuts through the air: "Don't believe her.

Waste today, want tomorrow...

Love, the deadliest of all deadly things.
It kills you.
Alex.
When you have it.
Alex.
And when you don't.
Alex.

They haven't killed us yet," I say, and I imagine that one day I will fly a plane over Portland, over Rochester, over every fenced-in city in the whole country, and I will bomb and bomb and bomb, and watch all their buildings smoldering to dust, and all those people melting and bleeding into flame, and I will see how they like it.

If you take, we will take back. Steal from us, and we will rob you blind. When you squeeze, we will hit.

This is the way the world is made now.

Alex loved books. He was the one who first introduced me to poetry. That's another reason I can't read anymore.