For three young girls, the sum  of their lives were just a series of little goodbyes…

      As if the end was 84% imagination, 10% will, Dawn Arbor climbed the water tower with the slightest of ease–expending a paltry 6% determination. When she reached the top of the diving platform, she hesitated for a moment to take a healthy breath. She checked the sun’s temperature with her face; a wet finger for wind factor. She pointed her toes west as if this would give her a better advantage. High above, the clouds were of minimal meaning to her. She raised her arms above her head for full effect, a position she’d learned from 7th grade gym class. A position fashioned that would allow her to cut through air at a clean 22 mph (her best estimate). But in the end she decided against it, pasting her arms flat at her sides. She gave herself a thrust, the balls of her feet springboarded off a rusted portion of metal–her body a perfect arc.

      Dawn Arbor was thirteen years old. Her last text: Mom, I love you.

      Dawn’s mother plucked the phone from her apron at the ping. She read the text. That’s sweet. I love you too, dear. And tucked the phone back into the sheath of her gown.

      Candi Lane was an odd name, but she owned it. She enjoyed soccer. She enjoyed the swift kicks, the almost-out-of-breath sprints, knees banged. She preferred to wear the abrasions like badges of courage. And her friends favored that about her. Her father often said, “She’s one tough cookie” or “You remind me of myself when I was at that age–all brass.” And Candi liked her father’s comparison. And Davy Joseph did too. He liked to say, “You’re all risk.” So it didn’t take much prodding for Candi Lane to send the video of her disrobing in her bathroom to Davy Joseph, her first and only boyfriend, who promised to share it with no one. No! One! Were his exact words.

      Candi Lane was twelve years old. She left no last text. She opened her wrists quietly.

      Abigail Lewis loved the way her lamp (with its golden accordion neck) would shine on the face of her father when he read her bedtime stories. The way he acted out each animal, the way he could be wind, and rain and sun in one sitting. But the summer she turned fourteen he stopped coming into her room unannounced; teasing her,  she was growing faster than a bean pole; the summer her mother had explained high school, and boys and drugs and alcohol. She

Expected her father would at one point hold her hand and deliver his famous line, “We trust you to make the right decisions.” But lately he was all excuses. He was dependent on what he referred to as an important mother/daughter forum. It was the summer her breasts had grown to enormous proportions–their weight slightly pulling her small frame forward, and her perspective more self-conscious. Her father looked more worrisome when he handed her her own iphone4 with all its gadgetry and free apps.

      That fall, Abigail Lewis apologized over and over (longhand) for disappointing her father. For making the wrong decision. And when her father had cut her down from her closet, he pressed her purple face into his chest , and he held her and he rocked her and he smoothed over her hair, again and again, until at last he buried his face into the crook of her neck.

      From the story Precedent

 At Visiting

Mother, Senida, Niada or Diane shove into

The booth-sized stall (only 3 allowed at one time).

The scene is reminiscent of circus clowns cramming

 Into a miniature car.

  They press their hands to the glass for immediate

Connection. Soft, high-back chairs are exchanged

According to weight and size. They settle in.

 Memories are what’s left between us.

There’s a fight for the phone. Senida, the

 Youngest, wins hands-down, but defers to

Mother (seniority is no contest).

There is chaos at the beginning, there is a

Shout of dialogue from behind Mother, someone

 Laughs. In visiting, someone always laughs, it’s

 An ordered chaos I’ve grown accustomed to:

Like clowns who know who sits where, who

Goes first and who is last out the pint-sized car.

 For Cinnamon McKinnon, poetry wasn’t a choice; it was the only way she knew how

To bleed without leaving a scar…

      Being suicidal you have to do a lot of      convincing

              Being thirteen a lot of conscious      forgetting

                      Being a victim                      fighting

                              Being is your           starting

                                                The end

      Near the end, she would come to the realization that her life wasn’t measured in

Moments of joy with her dearest friends, but in the quiet, desperate battles she

Survived alone.