Innocents
Page 35
To my grandmother for this backbone and for love that I’ve always felt safe inside.
To birdie for long talks, pockets full of stones, tail-curls, and peach lace.
To Panera managers for giving me free coffee and letting me work long hours on this and so many stories.
To bus drivers for keeping me safe as I worked.
To Mrs Shuker for telling me I had a voice.
To Brock Ternes, for telling me what I should have written on the board was poetry.
To Mary, for creating this with me.
To my and our readers, thank you for giving this a chance, for your time spent reading and loving, for all the things you’ve said, done, made, and shared. Thank you for sharing intimate memories. Thank you for post-chapter Skype dates. Thank you for videos and banners. Thank you for mailed mementos, Tumblr pages, pictures shared, every review, every personal message, every anticipation, freakout, tear, tingle, heartbeat, and tweet. Thank you so much for giving these characters a place in your hearts.
To Sophie for a song I’m going to take everywhere.
To little buffalo, whose breath I love, whose warmth I treasure, whose sounds I hold dear and whose pulse I know by heart. You’ve kept my toes warm, my perseverance warmer, and my dreams warmest. I love you more than sunshine, and always will.
To Karin, who has saved the day, my chapters, my sanity, my will, my hope, and my life more times than I can count. Thank you for loving Dusty – carefully, truly, and originally. Thank you for your careful eyes and late nights, for passing messages back when, and for defending love. Thank you for feeding his heart and mine. Thank you for staying up with me more times than I’ll ever be able to count. Thank you for giving Bliss’ heart a voice. Thank you for giving Petey a Spoon CD and for loving him too. Thank you for songs, faith, patience, endurance, and excited squeaks. Thank you for listening to me cry and laugh and hum. Thank you for giving my heart a home. Thank you for not giving up. Thank you for a love that is deeper, stronger, wider, further reaching, and more beautiful than any I’ve ever experienced. Thank you for voicenotes, vitamins, validation, and sustenance on so many levels. Thank you for staying with me while I walked under that overpass. Thank you for kisses. Thank you for making me not alone. Thank you for being the person I want to turn to when it hurts most and when it feels best. Thank you for your courage and your sincerity. You’ve literally fed me, clothed me, and sheltered me. You make me better. I love you with every single beat of my heart and more. I love you always and all ways.
And to trouble, with whom my heart in this and so much resides. Thank you for coming when I need you most. Thank you for your trust, your faith, your strength, your truth and your secrets. Thank you for walking with me. Thank you for sitting beside me. Thank you for making every single step of this so beyond worth it. I love you wholly, fearlessly, and forever.
Mary Elizabeth is an up and coming author who finds words in chaos, writing stories about the skeletons hanging in your closets. Known as The Realist, she’s a hairstylist by day but contemporary fiction, new adult author by night. Born and raised in Southern California, she’s a wife, mother of four beautiful children, and dog tamer to one enthusiastic Pit Bull and a prissy Chihuahua.
Mary can often be found finger twirling her hair and chewing on a stick of licorice while writing and rewriting a sentence over and over until it’s perfect. She discovered her talent for tale-telling accidentally, but literature is in her chokehold. And she’s not letting go until every story is told.
For more information on Mary’s solo work, including her upcoming project, Closer, set to release in 2015, follow her on Facebook and Goodreads and on Twitter. You can also visit her on her website.
Love’s listener is a lone wolf born a unicorn with a red panda soul and a heart she drew herself. Friend, sister, Elizabeth, and truelove. She’s a messenger that makes art with words and love with art. She’s been yelly, yellowglue, squeak, cuppycakes, precious pinks, warren, little grey, a girl named ben, and sarahbear. She’s a synesthete, a heart junkie, a truth seeker, and secret keeper. Poet half, Sun half, and total scripturient, Sarah has written since she was old enough to hold a marker and would die if she didn’t. Her work is equal parts her passion, sanctuary, precipice, vice, adventure, restorative, deliverance, and joy.
She currently resides in Kansas City, where her best friends are girls named Moses and Bunny. Her hero is a boy named Bishop. Her army is comprised of one little buffalo, and her truelove has ocean eyes. She likes her pears overripe, believes love is God, and knows hoods were made to be worn.
For more information on her upcoming work, including Don’t Let Me Go, visit LittleGreyPages.tumblr.com and her Twitter.
10-23-2014
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