Sadie

It’s turned colors I can only liken to bruised fruit. Purples and browns and hints of yellow.

The siding is grimy, the roof badly in need of repair, if not outright replacement, and I spot a few cracked and broken windows here and there.

Suburbia is taking root. A new development will hopefully inspire an economic upswing—though that might price some of its longtime residents out

“What’ll it be?”

His voice sounds like a knife that sharpens itself on other people, intimidating enough that I can’t even imagine what it would sound like if he yelled.

A truck stop. Closest thing to a pause button for people living on fast-forward, only they don’t pause so much as dial themselves down to twice the speed the rest of us operate on.

The husk of an abandoned, turn-of-the-century one-room schoolhouse sits three miles outside of town, taken by fire. The roof is caved in and what’s left of the walls are charred.

People don’t change. They just get better at hiding who they really are

They both have similarly peachy faces and pointed features

How do you forgive the people who are supposed to protect you?

Like my junkie mother’s addiction was my personal failing because I couldn’t put my compassion ahead of all the ways she made me starve.