She hated flowers. Held in her hand she would look at them when she received them for achievements or performances, she’d smell them and then she’d dry them so that they wouldn’t die.

I think about these things a lot.

People are creatures of skin and bone and puzzle pieces, and something’s always broken. They’re searching everywhere for the missing pieces, in broad daylight and neon in darkness, of darkness and of the truths or whatever parts of it they can find. There was a woman whose father was the big puzzle solver and he would hand her pieces at the right time for her to have them, he would heal whatever part of herself was a mystery, complete and build up until she got closer to him.

I think about these things a lot.

We’re cracks in concrete walls and wrinkly shirts and unmatching sunsets under blemished sky. But her room was filled with the dried flowers. And when her father saw it he stopped in the doorway and lost his smile. He asked her where the puzzles where and she looked down, saying that she was almost done. Lifted a hand that was almost covered, soon strong enough to reach out with. He tilted his head.
”I will be a good example.” she said, ”I will show other people what an end result can look like.” She would help them find their pieces, show them what they were looking for, answers for what didn’t fit or form the right pattern. A piece from her hand fell and she looked at him.
”See? It’s not finished. Can you just help me a little more?” and he reached out and removed anything that ever covered her and she fell with it.

I think about these things a lot.

The things weighing you down are dust and wind with a different sense of gravity imprinted as a lie in your mind. And she rolled away from it, sitting up, looking as the father put the pieces together on the floor.
”That’s where you’re supposed to make puzzles.” he said. Looking at the images starting to make sense and everything fitting together she got scared. The turn away from mirrors kind of scared, the open scared because you have nothing between you and it and she didn’t even know what she looked like anymore so he put her in front of a mirror, bumping her with his elbow.

I think about these things a lot.

”See, you kind of look like me.”