Free the fire fluttering inside her rib cage. Work her muscles, the bow, the violin, until she played herself to ash and embers and left the rest of the world behind to smolder.

At last started to play and she gestured to dance with me. As we slow danced I couldn’t tell what day or year it was. For all I know, Etta could have been singing it live. We danced like lovers do and as the song neared it’s melodic end, she whispered in my ear—I just got lost with you.

For the longest time, I saw them as the end of my journey, but now I think they were always meant to represent the beginning of yours.

It's our choices that matter in the end. Not wishes, not words, not promises.

How do you fight against a mountain? How do you move it when you don't even have a shovel?” “Maybe you don't have to move it,” Etta said, folding the gown over the lid of the trunk. “Maybe you have to climb it.