When she cries, you try to ignore it.It’s difficult, of course. Most people find it unbearable to hear a young girl sob, but you’ve learned to bear it. You don’t have a choice; nothing you do will ever make her stop. She’s been crying for as long as you can remember, relentlessly reminding you of everything you’ve done. And who else is to blame for her tears? Who else would listen to a girl’s grief until her crying becomes nothing more than the haunting lullaby that lets you sleep each night?

Being invisible is my superpower. Now, I don’t mean I’m some caped crusader flying through the skies, saving the day. No, the reality is that I’m a woman of a certain age who, without warning, has slipped into invisibility.

You wouldn’t have noticed it if you weren’t searching for it. That was exactly the idea.SourceThe instructions from my embroidery group were simple: After nightfall, walk past the bakery to the second lane, look for the unlit lamppost, then turn into the dark alley, spoken in hushed tones as the pianist suddenly played louder, by coincidence. Then you’ll find a moss-covered stone staircase, descend it, and at the bottom, a dim hallway awaits. She lives through the green doors on the left.

The girl in the graveyard is your best friend, so you bring her home. The night presses down on you both, a bruise on the horizon, its hue a rogue smear reflected in the passenger window..like fruit gone soft and forgotten. The body in the seat struggles with the seatbelt, fingers twitching first, then two, clawing at the strap. The radio hums with static, and her body shifts, the creak of her seat the only sound. You focus on her face...the sharp angle of her jaw, the nose still crooked from the baseball that hit her when she was twelve, just off-center. Her skin is like a plastic bag wet from the rain, sagging, pulled thin. The stench of musk and sulfur hangs in the air. You try to look away but can't. She's so beautiful, even like this. The headlights slice through the dirt road in front of you, the yellow light pale and sickly, like jaundice. Your hands ache from the cold, your lips cracked with the dry sting of winter air. And beside you, she’s dead..and yet you’re bringing her home.

I probably shouldn’t have opened the email. But once I did, I couldn’t stop reading and rereading it, to the point where I could recite some parts of it verbatim.Source"I shouldn’t have reacted the way I did when you broke up with me.

My sister’s heart has always been soft, soft like sweetbread.SourceShe cried for the old woman, despite everything..or perhaps because of it. I remember holding her as she wept, our bodies covered in soot, her fingers burned from holding the oven door shut.