Kyrie McCauley

In Auburn, Pennsylvania, a farming community overrun with crows, high school senior Leighton struggles to keep herself and her sisters safe from their abusive father even as she starts a relationship.

If These Wings Could Fly

Are the enemies without greater than those within?

He keeps his gun where it's easy to reach. He says it won't be much help if he has to go find it during a home invasion, but it's the thing I think about every time he gets like this. It's always the same question in my mind: Is tonight the night he reaches for it?

He brought me flowers and a hug for my 16th at a public space. I've always disliked receiving flowers. Now I hate it.

He brought her flowers. Scarlet roses that sit in a chipped vast next to the sink. He likes to apologise with small gestures that never match the gravity of what he's done.

When he disappeared he may have slept in his van.

"He slept at his office. What more do you want?"

The scraps I saved in my piano bag are gone.

Instead if hanging this photo up, I lay it on the counter beside the roses.

She has to decide whether to put it back on the wall.

But thanks to my home, I've seen the slip side of the charming coin, and it isn't a prince.

I smell the roses and think of women let down by other women. Women who are told their obedience is more important than their voice, not by their husbands, but by their mothers, their friends. Women wiling to watch each other get hurt for the sake of image and tradition.

Here they label ignorance as tradition and carry on as though they've earned the right to be cruel.

It's either this or apathy. Nothing in between for me.

My dad loved it so much it destroyed him.

"Isn't that the dream? Get in everywhere? Have half a dozen golden paths laid out, ours for the choosing."

If These Wings Could Fly quotes

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