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As Colin struggles with this possibility, across the street, Sarah’s little sister, Claire learns how to navigate the strange new landscape of life without her sister. While her parents fall apart, Claire remains determined to keep going even if it kills her.
THIS IS SARAH serves as a meditation on loss, love and what it means to say goodbye.
EXCERPT
They found her red Chuck Taylor
sneakers five miles from where her car was, deep in the woods.
One was unlaced, as if she had undone
it and slipped her foot out of it right there under that canopy of trees.
The other was still tied.
Snow filled them like little red
candies covered in sugar.
In the police station, in that
evidence bag, they seemed so small, as the snow slowly melted off them,
staining the fabric and dripping into the bottom of the bag. I couldn’t imagine
them fitting Sarah’s feet. I couldn’t imagine them fitting my own.
Sarah’s empty shoes.
I thought about how they’d never be
worn again. How she would never slide her foot inside, how her fingers would
never tug those laces and loop them closed.
Her room back home was filled with
things that would go unused. They’d just sit there, waiting for Sarah to come
home, collecting dust.
All the things Sarah left behind.
When I saw the shoes, sitting in the
police station, a noise escaped me. Not quite a sob, but a cry—a shock of disbelief—and my hope retreated as I realized I
was now one of those things. Like her clothes, her jewelry, her records or her
shoes.
I was just another thing Sarah left
behind.
Ally Malinenko is the author of the poetry collection The Wanting Bone (Six Gallery Press) and
the children's fantasy Lizzy Speare and
the Cursed Tomb (Antenna Books). She lives in Brooklyn with her husband.
