You Could Not Be Filled With Hate

I Would Like To Tell You That I Am, And You Will One Day Be, Forever Safe.

The Dead Are Never Exactly Seen By The Living, But Many People Seem Acutely Aware Of Something Changed Around Them. They Speak Of A Chill In The Air. The Mates Of The Deceased Wake From Dreams And See A Figure Standing At The End Of Thier Bed, Or In A Doorway, Or Boarding, Phantomlike, A City Bus.

These Were The Lovely Bones That Had Grown Around My Absence: The Connections-sometimes Tenuous, Sometimes Made At Great Cost, But Often Magnificent-that Happened After I Was Gone. And I Began To See Things In A Way That Let Me Hold The World Without Me In It. The Events That My Death Wrought Were Merely The Bones Of A Body That Would Become Whole At Some Unpredictable Time In The Future. The Price Of What I Came To See As This Miraculous Body Had Been My Life.

I Watched My Beautiful Sister Running . . . And I Knew She Was Not Running Away From Me Or Toward Me. Like Someone Who Has Survived A Gut-shot, The Wound Had Been Closing, Closing - Braiding Into A Scar For Eight Long Years.

When I Was Raped I Lost My Virginity And Almost Lost My Life. I Also Discarded Certain Assumptions I Had Held About How The World Worked And About How Safe I Was.