Status Updates From Autumn Street: A Coming-of-...

There was sky in the fireplace. There was the Pacific, the horizon, the war, the past: the pale blue of places I had dreamed of; and the dark, awesome greens of places to which I was frightened to go.

I realized then, for the first time, that her dreams would always be different from mine.

With a brush, I would blur the woods. I would blur them with a murky mixture of brown and green and black, the hueless shade that I know from my dreams to be the color of pain.