Dear Mr. Stillwaters,

The clouds separate into different faces, some gleaming with smiles and frowns, and they merge into each other, like a big white blood clot in the sky. Tomorrow, like seeds in the drainpipe of your bathroom sink, stuck in between the porcelain and the drain, little green heads coming out from between the cracks, teeth gleaming like green veins.

She always told me not to worry what people thought; the way they look you up and down before smiling. She would pat my head and tell me that it's alright, sticks and stones and all that jazz. I'd look at my feet and agree and all as if her head was the sun at noon on the playground when the sand would go flying up into the air as rushing feet hit the sand. They glitter in the air like little crystals, I used to think. I'd collect the clear ones and build a city of them, separated from all of the others so that they could gleam in the sun like diamonds. They'd rush out, feet kicking, and all my sand would go flying, into the cracks in the gravel, the cement, the dirt and the grass.

We'd watch the grass grow over the years under the soles of our feet and the dogs still barked across on the other lot; black with brown jaws and big teeth with spit glittering off into the space in front of them as they growled at us. The soccer ball would shoot over our heads and the bees in the pine trees came and went after getting a few of us; big red welts on our arms and legs from poking their nest and getting in trouble for it all. I'd catch a yellow-jacket and make it my pet, show myself how it would stay in it's cage because it liked it there. But the first time I showed anyone else it flew out and up into the sky.

(Sometimes I would wake up at night and all the men wandering around, lost in bees and dust from the ground behind the trees watching us from behind face masks, their faces were gone, their faces were gone and they wouldn't speak or make sound, but you could see them when you look closely; they would watch you and move about.)

(One night he came in my sleep, in my dreams, and told me to take photo's of our house, so I did, but when I took the picture of the portrait of his sister, she came out and touched my face, the white hat on her head falling off and her red ribbon wrapped around her neck, making her hair hug her face, forlorn with despair. I tried to run away but she was holding my shirt.)

I opened up and all the raccoons ran into my gut.