I’m 12. My father wakes me at 7am in a panic. Saturday morning. What happened? Are you okay??? He can barely produce the sounds that make these words. And me...

Mother-less. My mother leaves our home as I enter the 6th grade. It will be years before I begin to understand the disease that takes her from me. For a time...

I slide into puberty like a whale slamming home base. Belly up and lacking grace. I still want to be the girl who skins her knees playing rough games on the ...

I’m standing on a stage with my hair in a cap and lights in my eyes. The play is Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I’m Charlie. Freckles drawn on my cheeks....

At 8, I am obsessed with the mirror. I can drop anchor there. There. My feet in the sink on the counter in that bathroom with the peeling blue and white wall...

6. At 6 I play all day on the monkey bars. I lay in bed at night and run my fingers over the callouses on my palms. I earned this. Pride. My tiny biceps deve...

5. I disappear one afternoon. I’m five years old. My mother finds me in a neighbor’s closet where the neighbor’s five year-old son and I are showing each oth...

4. My brother is an infant. Baby skin. I can’t get enough of that skin. I maul him. I kiss his crown. I carry him from room to room. Tiny limbs dangling. I c...

3. I’m four and a half years old. I hold up 4 pudgy fingers to tell you so. I make sure to add the half. With voice. The half is important. It means I’m gain...

2. My second birthday. Or perhaps it is my third. I climb out of my crib to spy my mother making a cake in the kitchen. The smell of sugar. The beating of me...

1. I’m bare skinned and belly down on a lamb skin rug. I’m watching myself in a mirror fixed to one side of a triangular plastic toy. The carpet is orange. I...

I hold her as an hour glass. perfect. creature. sand that tick tick ticks through that neck. in night, I hold her on her side watch the still the pause of ti...

my life has been as ordinary as any other in that it has been extraordinary in corners built for my sole perception the magnificence of simplicity. that priv...

are you rain, she says. yes, yes, I am. how did you know? I say. “my grandmother was rain. Flash Flood. You.” she wants to know what my rules are so she can ...

Healing is not a graph one can point to and there is no one course of action that can lead us there. It is a mercurial act of will and a game of hot and cold...

my body is a container memories and thoughts more than architecture I wear the cake I ate with pride I wear the hurts I ached right there over my right eye m...

I’ve seen God in a ripped sky bleeding over a volcano’s crown I’ve seen God in your hands I’ve seen God in your mouth in cool water that gave a shiver to my ...

perfectionism is a drug free and lethal spiny thorns that press to a fixed place cracks give me peace it wasn’t always the case I want to know what’s waving ...

there’s kombucha in my fridge and crystals in my pockets totems they make me feel good i curse like a sailor i like sailors my dad was one in a past life and...

I used to shame myself for procrastinating before sitting down to write on days I have set aside for working. I would putter and clean the house in pajamas a...