I dream of balloons: full of air, pushing outward, skin taut with life. I dream in colors—reds and greens, saffron gold. I watch them rise higher and higher, until suddenly, they must pop. What is it like to live inside someone’s memory? Pieces only, improper vignette. Pages of me are lost, torn out, never printed. Parts of me have no detail. Sometimes I think that I will disappear without him, that I will look in the mirror and see only a mirror behind me. He gives me lovely lace nightgowns to wear, edged with silks. He snuffs out my candle [...]

Winner of the Edward Eager Memorial Prize for fiction in 2006 Sarah liked sappy, depressing songs. It wasn’t that she herself was depressed— it was that she simply liked to be reminded of what being depressed was all about. It made her feel smaller somehow. Less important. Less alive. In fact, sometimes Sarah wondered if she even existed at all. Sometimes she stared at the backs of her hands, their inky pinkness, and was astounded to remember that they were her own, that beneath them blood flowed and coursed. Sometimes she took a pen and dug it into the ridges on [...]