ACT   ONE.

i will never turn my back
on people who need me.

     let me tell the tale of a girl who didn't stop, who climbed up every mountain without a pause upon the top.

     she'd dance until each blade of grass was clothed in drops of dew, and the sun knew her by name but the silver moon did too.

     for a fear had settled in her bones; a fear of sitting still, that if you're not moving forward it must mean you never will.

     so in time her dance got slower and she looked at all she'd seen, but found gaps inside the places that she'd never fully been.

     for she was a human doing human moving, human seeing, but she'd never taken the time to simply be a human being.

— E.H.

ACT ONE.

               chapter one — twelve.
homecoming.

there's a ghost in the upstairs bedroom

and she looks like me.