A Lily in the Light

by Kristin Fields

wanted you here because you know the version of me I most want to be.

Cerise carried a pink frosted cake on a glass plate, the one they only used for birthdays. Esme felt a stone catch in her throat. Life was starting again, and yet part of her would always wish her mother hadn’t packed away the moon after Lily but had kept making frosted cakes on that special glass plate for her or Nick or Madeline, because they’d always been in reach. They’d been colored invisible instead. The left behind.