Lying on the floor, all she could see was paper. Little torn pieces of paper, blowing gently in the nighttime breeze slipping through her window and across her gossamer curtains. She shifted her head to the side, but they were still there. Ripped up pieces of her heart, pinned across the walls.

There was a far away voice from behind the door, but she crushed her hands against her eyes and didn’t hear.

Meg. John.

Moonlight trailed its way down onto her hair, spreading out across the carpet between her bed and her desk. It glinted off of her white lacey dress that she had wanted so badly but had never needed, and stroked the edges of her glittering shoes. It hinted at the shadow around her knees. She always thought moonlight seemed gentler, more forgiving than sunlight. It was less harsh and less blunt, and was better at keeping secrets hidden. Moonlight carried whispered promises and unspoken thoughts and oceans of regret. She wrapped her arms around her stomach, curling into a ball on her side and facing the plaster wall that had been for so many months. She tried to hold herself together, to keep the pain from eating away at her from the inside out.

By now the pleading through the door had stopped, and was replaced by the shouts of a desperate voice echoing against the plaster walls.

Alec. Sierra. Grace.

She reached out with one finger and touched the edge of a few pearly scraps. They each held such promise, such life. She read them out loud in a broken whisper.

Cailee. Tyler. Paloma.

A dull pounding noise begins, and she struggled to keep reading. The door began to shake, and so did her words on the wall. The papers fluttered in a desperate dance, making them harder and harder to read. She tried to hold them in place with an outstretched hand, to keep her napkins and her envelopes and her Charlies and her Larks and her Sammys from breaking away from her.

Anthony. Jessica. Sam. Calliope. David.

With a crack of sound, the door slammed open. The light shattered across her, making her scream in fear and shock and hate and shame and Liam Grace Alice Everett Genevieve Tristan Robert -

Strong arms lifted her up, pulling her out of the cranberry shadow of loss, away from them, all of those little papers with so much promise, so much life.

EllenArmandoLuisJosephCarlyNinaBrandonJosephineLaurenDanielMadisonKatrina

She reached for them as the arms dragged her away, away from the last 6 months of hope and happiness and promise and life. She screamed for them, for her Pipers Jonathons Nicholases Catherines. As she was carried down the stairs and into unconsciousness, the last things she saw were her hands stained scarlet, grasping for something she had already lost.