Light Boxes

I wanted to write you a story about magic. I wanted rabbits appearing from hats. I wanted balloons lifting you into the sky. It turned out to be nothing but sadness, war, heartbreak. You never saw it, but there’s a garden inside me.

List of Artists Who Created Fantasy Worlds to Try and Cure Bouts of Sadness 1. Italo Calvino 2. Gabriel Garcia Marquez 3. Jim Henson and Jorge Luis Borges - Labyrinths 4. The creator of MySpace 5. Richard Brautigan 6. J.K. Rowling 7. The inventor of the children's toy Lite-Brite 8. Ann Sexton 9. David Foster Wallace 10. Gaugin and the Caribbean 11. Charles Schulz 12. Liam Rector

I’m so confused it almost feels calm.

They held me and told me everything would be fine, that sadness would rise from our bones and evaporate in sunlight the way morning fog burned off the river in summer. My mother rubbed the kites on my hands and arms and told me to think of my lungs as balloons. I just want to feel safe, I said.

The left side of my body is Bianca, and my right side is Selah. With no body I have no reason to move from this spot.

I've slowed my heartbeat to three beats per minute.

Selah wished for a moat to protect their home from February. Selah wished for the end of February and endless sadness and the end to the missing children. Selah wished for the rebirth of town and flight. Selah wished for a scrap of something beautiful.