Jill wiped xylem from her gloves and closed her car’s leafy hood. She’d kept Snapdragon on the road for almost twenty years, and if the world would leave her alone, she could keep him alive for five more, easy. It wouldn’t, and she couldn’t.

My dearest Evie: I am so terribly sorry, my darling daughter, but by the time you read this letter, I will be gone. I wish I could have delayed my departure long enough to attend your high school graduation as I always promised I would, but the timing was outside of my control.

I am thinking of a word. I will not tell you what it is. I will tell you a few other words. The words you were looking for, though not all the words you were hoping for. Some of the words you were hoping for, I’ll let you have. Such as these: You were right. Doesn’t that feel good?

The soldiers slit the woman’s throat every evening before bedding down so they can sleep without worry. She mocks them but never fights the knife coming to her. Two of the men still take turns watching her in case she heals before the rest of the cadre wakes.

What is the colour of pain? In the growing carmine tide that creeps in her heart-mind, Mathilde would swear all that hurts is red, like her scratched hand, her wounded wrists, her slashed ankles. It’s the blood trickling from her fingers.

Here is a boy, barely thirteen, broken, lying in the road, twisted metal around him, twisted metal in him. Here is his heart, pierced by the shrapnel of the truck, a truck no longer, now a confusion of tangled wire and torn steel and glass pebbles.