My parents had always been so careful with me, until the day they decided I needed to die.

Flickering lights
anonymous doors
my heart escaping in drips
i'm still waking up
but she's still sleeping
this ICU is
hotel for the dead

I walk through the seasons and always the birds
are singing and screaming and keening for love
When you're with me it seems so absurd
that I should be jealous of the jay and the dove.

Folded in my arms you're a butterfly in reverse
you're giving up your wings and inheriting my curse
you're letting go of
me
you're letting go

I won't let this be my good-bye. I've folded one thousand paper crane memories of me and Grace, and I've made my wish.
I will find a cure. And then I will find Grace.

She loved all the wolves behind her house, but she loved one of them most of all.

And this one loved her back. He loved her back so hard that even the things that weren't special about her became special: the way she tapped her pencil on her teeth, the off-key songs she sang in the shower, how when she kissed him he knew it meant for ever.

Hers was a memory made up of snapshots: being dragged through the snow by a pack of wolves, first kiss tasting of oranges, saying goodbye behind a cracked windshield.

A life made up of promises of what could be: the possibilities contained in a stack of college applications, the thrill of sleeping under a strange roof, the future that lay in Sam's smile.

It was a life I didn't want to leave behind.

It was a life I didn't want to forget.

I wasn't done with it yet. There was so much more to say.