A skeleton: it does not blush | Helen Sullivan

He knew the anguish of the marrow'

When I was eight, my mother made me a costume for a Halloween party. Even at eight, this seemed like an important party. The costume was beautiful, as the things my mother made often were: more beautiful than a child's thing ought to be, more beautiful than what a mother ought to be able to make after work.

It was a skeleton costume: a unitard made from stocking fabric, painted with fluorescent paint; I remember the care she took to make the bones accurate, to make them just my size, matching femur to femur.