Annabelle has two on her back, shiny and wide, running vertically down her shoulder blades. Her mother told her that she stumbled and fell on a board with nails in it, and that's where the scars come from. Her father told her she was scratched by a dog when she was a baby, and that's where she got them. Sometimes her muscles spasm beneath the scars. And often in the morning, after a dream of flying, her shoulders ache. T is for Time, and Annabelle feels it shortening and shortening as the shadows lengthen and the sun slides west. U is for Umbilicus, the first connection between mother and daughter, which leaves its mark on the child's belly forever. But Annabelle has no navel, her stomach is as smooth as the skin of a peach, unmarked and untouched. Annabelle's mother thinks sometimes of umbilical cords being cut with scissors, of that fundamental severance, which she and Annabelle never had. Instead of scissors, there was a knife, and it wasn't a cord that was cut, not the connection between mother and daughter that was severed, but a different connection altogether.
