My dear, don’t mistake the dust in the corners of the room for glitter. It’s the feeling of finality. The part where we ride our bikes in the neighborhood for the last time. Clumsily falling out of girlhood, but fighting it the entire way down. Watching it leave me like sin- my needing to get rid of it but wanting to hang on like a keepsake. Now I write letters to my old self in brail so that she feels every word. I tell her how to hold onto it, but I don’t think she cares enough. Life’s flashing in different colors. Im starting to ignore the pigments and care less. This scares everyone around me, but I need to sit in the darkness before I try and walk through it- you understand that, right? Help me again, because you know I’ll never ask. Read through the pages of every story I write and try to pick out your character- try to find where you fit in the plot. Everything is hidden. We keep our secrets tucked under our tongues with the venom and only show people before the kill. It’s a sticky act of truce and I dance along delicately. I keep helpless cries hidden between my rib cage- throw away the key and you’ll never guess where to find it. But the earth will still spin on its axis with or without knowing our hiding spots. Finality turns these acts of grace into memories. Turns the moon and stars into our only source of natural light in the nighttime after the sun leaves. Turns the warning signs into lessons that we can’t let go of because that’s what broke us in the first place. Turns the dust to glitter. AMT