Brandon

“I muffle a scream behind my fist.

The dog isn't a dog after all. Not like a terrier, or even like Mrs. Leahy's lab. No. This dog is a horse. It's legs look as thick as my own. It's back is huge and muscular, and then there's this boxy head, on top of a neck as big as my waist.

The dog is brown and white, with odd patches of black fur. When it turns to look at me, it's eyes are masked like a raccoon's. The stripe between it's eyes gets broader at the top of it's head, and there's a brown patch of fur, almost round, at the very center of it's forehead.

"Holy Jesus," I say to the dog.”
― E.M. Crane, Skin Deep

“Olive sat right here, thought Martha. Right on this very spot. She got up to leave. She walked over to the garbage. It wasn't really a decision, more an impulse. Among the strained sofa cushions and broken chairs and brittle houseplants and moldy shower curtain, Martha saw a plastic bucket crammed with paintbrushes. She plucked a brush from the middle of the bunch. It was the thinnest one, and longest. It's bristles were stiff and well used.

Instinctively Martha went back to the concrete steps. She knelt down, took a deep breath, and blew at the top step, clearing away the dirt and small debris. Then she opened the little jar of seawater. It smelled fishy. She waited, breathing softly, working at the bristles with her fingers to loosen them. Finally she dipped the brush into the jar of water and wrote Olive's name on the top step. Martha retraced the letters until the jar was empty. She watched intently-the concrete turned dark and then light again as the water evaporated. Olive's name was there one moment, then gone the next, like a flicker in the great scheme of things.

"Good-bye," she whispered.

Martha gently placed the empty jar and the brush into one of the garbage cans as she left.

Good-bye.”
― Kevin Henkes, Olive's Ocean

“She looked across the yards and saw that Florry was still staring at her through the bars of the fire escape. Francie waved and called:

"Hello, Francie."

"My name ain't Francie," the little girl yelled back. "It's Florry, and you know it, too."

"I know," said Francie.

She looked down into the yard. The tree whose leaf umbrellas had curled around, under and over her fire escape had been cut down because the housewives complained that wash on the lines got entangled it its branches. The landlord had sent two men and they had chopped it down.

But the tree hadn't died... it hadn't died.

A new tree had grown from the stump and its trunk had grown along the ground until it reached a place where there were no wash lines above it. Then it had started to grow towards the sky again.

Annie, the fir tree, that the Nolans had cherished with waterings and manurings, had long since sickened and died. But this tree in the yard- this tree that men chopped down... this tree they built a bonfire around, trying to burn up its stump- this tree lived!

It lived! And nothing could destroy it.

Once more she looked at Florry Wendy reading on the fire escape.

"Good-bye, Francie," she whispered.

She closed the window.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn Low Price CD by Betty Smith

“A while ago Jonny asked me why I was still keeping a journal, who I was writing it for. I've asked myself that a lot, especially in the really bad times.

Sometimes I've thought I'm keeping it for people 200 years from now, so they can see what our lives were like.

Sometimes I've thought I'm keeping it for that day when people no longer exist but butterflies can read.

But today, when I am 17 and warm and well fed, I'm keeping this journal for myself so I can always remember life as we knew it, life as we know it, for a time when I am no longer in the sunroom.”
― Susan Beth Pfeffer, Life As We Knew It