Dawn wakes me these days. I surface slowly from a dream full of red and yellow feathers. My mind echoes with green sounds and thoughts that are not my own. I can taste blood in my mouth. I never know whose dreams I am going to get in the night. But the body actually gets to rest, these days, instead of being used by someone else while I sleep. So it’s worth it.

Other things are different too. Three days a week I work in the kitchen of a diner across town. I like the walk, watching the city slowly grow up around me. Right now I just wash dishes, but they tell me that maybe soon I can start helping the fry cooks. There is no work today—today is just for us.

Without plywood over the windows, the house seems made of light. I get out of bed, careful not to tear the staples that run down my side. Our body is a landscape, of scars and new wounds both. I stand and for a moment there is a wrestling in the depths of us. The body sways dangerously and we all feel sick. Sulky, Lauren lets me take control. I steady us with a hand on the wall, breathing deeply. The day is full of these seismic, nauseous struggles. We are learning. It is not easy to hold everyone in your heart at once.

Later today, maybe Lauren will take the body. She will ride her bike and draw, or we will go to the woods. Not to the glade, though, or the waterfall. We don’t go there. The blue dress of rotting organza, her old vanity case, her bones—they must be left alone so that they stop being gods and return to being just old things.

We will walk under the trees and listen to the sounds of the forest in autumn.

The tired possum detective and the police are searching the woods near the lake. They want to find the little boys Mommy took. They think there might have been as many as six, over the years. It’s hard to say because children do wander off. They were mostly boys from sad families, or who had no families. Mommy would have chosen the ones who wouldn’t be missed. Little Girl With Popsicle was a big deal because she had parents.

Maybe one day the boys will be found. Until then I hope they are peaceful under the forest green, held by the kind earth.

In the late afternoon perhaps Night Olivia and I will doze on the couch, watching the big trucks. When darkness falls they will hunt. A moment of unease travels through me, like the brush of a wet leaf on the back of my neck. Night Olivia is large and strong.