Aliya Mango’s Reviews > The Four Winds > Status Update

Life went on, even in the hardest of times.

She sometimes wondered if his sadness had always been there and she’d just finally grown up enough to see it.

She’d let that shame become a part of her, let it weave through her body and mine, become the connective tissue that held her together. But in that shame, there had been hope that one day they would see past all of that to the real her, the sister/daughter she was in her mind. A flower closed up tightly, waiting for the sunlight to fall on furled petals, desperate to bloom.