Pain pours though her eyes. From the well of countless disappointments, where confusion and dying dreams decay, words, like polluted fish, escape towards the light.

I open my hand. Etched into my nerves there are all those I love. No, love is too generic a word – more precisely, those I carry under my skin, inside my soul. When they hurt, my stomach knots into a fist. When they laugh, sunshine floods through me.