I'm not quite sure where that one came from. My children are grown, now, so the nightmares of this kind of thing are long past. Still, it just wanted to come out. Fear can be, even decades later, a powerful motivator.

Sail, I remember sitting in a North London park with Jo, aged about two months, talking to a woman with a newborn son. Healthy little guy, chubby, smiling, very mellow.

She stopped coming to the park after a few weeks and I found out he'd had a stroke, and died, aged 6 weeks. She had high blood pressure, her whole family did, her husband did - they were all Lebanese, both sides of the family. Never thought to check the baby for it.

Both Sail's and erika's are amazing.

I'm glad I didn't know babies could have strokes, I had enough nightmares when my babies were small. Poor woman.

Sail, that was an *amazing* piece. I had to walk away from my desk and sniffle a bit.

And once I got done sniffling ...

It's not the usual sort of place someone would keep hopes, dreams, and fancies. Some people might write those things down in a book with a pretty picture on the cover, or bound in velvet; a new page for every wish. Still others have hope chests, or boxes; a rainy-day activity, sorting through keepsakes from the past, or icons for future memories.

One fuzzy ear sticking up, the second flopped over one shiny black eye, fangs just peeping over his dapper bow tie. While I sleep, he whispers my hopes and dreams back to me in a voice only I can hear.

CLOVIS!

Sail, that was, quite literally, the only case of a baby having a stroke that I've ever heard of. Never before or since.

To Have and...

When it was over—the sweatyslick movement of skin sliding across skin and a hand or a tongue or was that a shoulder brushing against her body—she was empty and full all at once. His chest pillowed her head; her arm draped his waist. They twined together like satisfaction.

The scent of their bodies combined, a heady musk settling across them, saturating their pores. Later, she would cup her hair to her nose and inhale this moment again. Later, the memory of this would make her smile inconveniently in the middle of a meeting.

Not the sex. The holding.

My contribution.

How the shoebox has survived nearly 25 years I don't know. The letters inside should probably have gone the way of the world long ago. Letters from Joe to my college-aged, naive self. I read them, and I'm her again, and the pain is too real. I'd go back, if I could, and tell her we'd become the kind of woman Joe dreaded, strong and confident. Reading them, though, reminds me that I loved him.

They've been here too long. I reach for the shredder, pause, then grab the matches.

Souls are freed on flaming pyres, and hers is long past due.

Holy crap. Just went back and read the drabbles on this to date.

Erika, that was amazing. The way you repeated the word hold and cycled the passage of time...wow.

Deb, beautifully hopeful. I love how you used Pandora's box here.

Sail, wow. Painful. Wrenching.

Jilli, I love the description of Clovis! I especially love this line: "One fuzzy ear sticking up, the second flopped over one shiny black eye, fangs just peeping over his dapper bow tie." So very evocative.

Connie, that one nearly broke me. Because I burned every single memento I had of the affair that defined the first half of my life, every photograph, every single anything.

It didn't free anything, alas.