... she wore a masterpiece smile with smudges of paint and graphite across her cheek, and her eyes were a Jackson Pollock painting.

When I was younger, my mom loved to garden. But the flowers would never grow. She kept planting seeds even thought nothing would grow. She just kept trying.''I don't understand.''Because you can't.''What does this have to do with anything?'I don't fiddle with my fingers and there's no apology on the tip of my tongue when I say, 'I am my mother's son.

When I was younger, my mom loved to garden. But the flowers would never grow. She just kept trying.''I don't understand.''Because you can't.''What does this have to do with anything?'I don't fiddle with my fingers and there's no apology on the tip of my tongue when I say, 'I am my mother's son.

I turn and run, watching my feet trample a massacre of weeds. I mourn them. The only thing that grows is dandelions in the cracks of the sidewalk and we always end up killing them.

There's something about the thousands of glittering lights, the veil of nighttime that almost makes this place beautiful, especially in the reflection of the water. It makes everything askew, disoriented. There's more truth in a ripple of water than in a clear day.

Erik wondered if they saw the irony of such a tiny complex expecting to find the cure from the very lives they minimized in comparison to the whole. If such small, little lives mattered not, how could they believe anything they did would matter?