Shadowlands

I get scared when people tell me they want to have my lifestyle. This is not Sex and the City, this is not the glamorous journey towards a happy ending like in the fairy tales. This is a car ride in the middle of the night, in the dark, and the lights along the road are from burning forests. As beautiful as it is to watch from a distance it will kill you, either the heat of the flames or the suffocating carbon monoxide in the air.

S called me earlier in the middle of a dream, her voice like black satin. She told me about a photo album and pictures from a long lost time when everything was pretty and pink. "It was", she said, "as if I saw myself from outside my own body".

My father left me hundreds and hundreds of pictures, but none are of him. When it hurts the most I can't even remember what he looked like.