“I have an impulse to write all over the orange walls- I need an alphabet of endings ripped out of books, of hands pulled off of clocks, of cold stones, of shoes filled with nothing but wind.”

“His face is more open than an open book, like a wall of graffiti really. I realize I'm writing wow on my thigh with my finger, decide I better open my mouth and snap us out of this impromptu staring contest.”

“How will I survive this missing? How do others do it? People die all the time. Every day. Every hour. There are families all over the world staring at beds that are no longer slept in, shoes that are no longer worn. Families that no longer have to buy a particular cereal, a kind of shampoo. There are people everywhere standing in line at the movies, buying curtains, walking dogs, while inside, their hearts are ripping to shreds. For years. For their whole lives. I don't believe time heals. I don't want it to. If I heal, doesn't that mean I've accepted the world without her?”

“According to all the experts, it's time for me to talk about what I'm going through... I can't. I'd need a new alphabet, one made of falling, of tectonic plates shifting, of the deep devouring dark.”

“He doesn’t have to say it, I feel it too; it’s not subtle - like every bell for miles and miles is ringing at once, loud and clanging, hungry ones and tiny, happy, chiming ones, all of them sounding off in this moment. I put my hands around his neck, pull him to me, and then he’s kissing me hard and so deep, and i am flying, sailing, soaring…”

“Everyone has always said I look like Bailey, but I don't.I have grey eyes to her green,an oval face to her heart-shaped one,I'm shorter, scrawnier, paler, flatter, plainer, tamer.All we shared is a madhouse of curlsthat I imprison in a ponytailwhile she let hers ravelike madnessaround her head.I don't sing in my sleepor eat the petals off flowersor run into the rain instead of out of it.I'm the unplugged-in one,the side-kick sister,tucked into a corner of her shadow.Boys followed her everywhere;they filled the booths at the restaurant where she waitressed,herded around her at the river.One day, I saw a boy come up behind herand pull a strand of her long hairI understood this-I felt the same way.In photographs of us together,she is always looking at the camera,and I am always looking at her.”

“I gasp, because isn't that just exactly what I've been doing too: writing poems and scattering them to the winds with the same hope as Gram that someone, someday, somewhere might understand who I am, who my sister was, and what happened to us.”