She always wore the silver-banded jade ring, hiked in the red shirt scrounged from a garage sale for two dollars. The color attracted hummingbirds that flashed color, buzzed sound, came dangerously close. They thought she was a flower. The shirt’s power, the contrast of tame jade and wild hummingbirds, the contradictions that lived inside her. Sometimes it scared her.

Her knife, an extension of her red-shirted arm, cut bread, spread peanut butter. Like the wild hummingbirds, she hovered on the edge of aggression, starved and looking for something to eat. The jade, it’s calming green, a promise to heal herself.