She walked down into the ruined street, the cracked asphalt sharp and obtrusive against her bare feet, stepping gently around the oil spills that seeped out from the busted hoopties left discarded for no one. The smell of the oil reminded her of the gas stations in the Mid West, where she'd drive through that one summer with her mother, before she died. The smell was thick and heavy, and even though the first whiff made her cough, she breathed it in, deeply swallowing the taste of her childhood. Now everything was gone. Had been gone for a while. Her loneliness shrouded her in shadows. 

After the earthquake, all the neighbors moved away, except her. She had nowhere to go. She'd wake up in the mornings, feed the strays with cornmeal she'd stolen from the looted market down on the corner, and rummage through the abandoned houses looking for treasures. Nothing of value, there was no one around to trade anything with or use as currency. She searched for sentiment, lost memories, forgotten emblems of joy. And that morning, after she fed the strays and whiffed her morning oil, she wound up in the back of Mrs. Fletcher's garage, barefoot and sweaty, digging through a row of cardboard boxes. The sides of all the boxes were broken with water damage, save for one: a small box labaled "STUFF" written in smudged black sharpie. 

She opened the box slowly, and inside, found a stack of postcards from all over the world. There was one from Indonesia, one from Geneva, another from Arizona with a bristling cactus set against a clear blue sky. One from Niagara Fall, the cascading water somehow cooling in the heat. Another from a farm in Peru overrun with sunflowers, bright and yellow. All of the postcards were stamped and addressed to Mrs. Fletcher, Joan, but shown no other text. Just a single X from the sender. 

The girl clutched the box of postcards in her frail arms and carried it back out into the street. The sun beat down on her, sending beads of sweat down her dirty face. She wiped them away and sat down on the cracked asphalt, placing the box right by her side. A helicopter soared high above her in the sky, searching for survivors, as they did every other day. The helicopters bored her. The first twenty or so times she saw them, she had jumped up and down for hours, waving her arms maniacally, in an exhausting attempt to be found. But after a while, she ignored them, and they ignored her. 

So she sat on the asphalt, a box of mystery postcards by her side, postcards showing glimpses of another world, another time, life and leisure, ideas she'd relinquished after the earthquake, after the neighbors disappeared and her mother died and the strays showed up scavenging for remains. She lay down on the cracked street, ignoring the hovering helicopters high up in the sky, the smell of oil deep in her nose, the sharp hot asphalt pinching her skin, and closed her eyes. 

And just as she began to fall asleep, a boy, no older than six, he must've been six, rode by on a bicycle with a bundle of sunflowers in his arms. He handed one out to the girl as she lay in the street, her blonde hair now soaked with oil. "Girasol," he said sweetly, and rode off without another word. Where had he come from, she wondered. And then he was gone. The girl held the sunflower above her against the sun. How funny, she thought, that a sunflower could grow in such decay. How funny.