the gaping mouth

“Well, she’s dead, mom,” Anne spits out; the hard truth, the wretched confession that rotted inside her for four years too long. She’d been thirteen then, so full of love that the universe asked for her. She’s sixteen, now, lingering too long on the sharp edges of seventeen—and she’d stayed thirteen for four years.  She doesn’t think she’ll ever be anything else. OR, the five times Sasha and Marcy asked Anne if she loves them, and the one time she says she does.