Your heart can’t take this. It’s true, yours is a heart that has persevered. That has gone round after round and still beats steady, true. But it is not unscathed. And your heart can’t take this. You try. Because it’s what you do.  You rally. You survive. You endure.  You break free and you flee, … Continue reading Gardening

I’m sitting in an airport. It’s quiet that way that it is when it’s early and people are still trying to shake the shackles of sleep. We’re all polite and gentle to each other as you can be when the day has not had the chance to make you hard. It’s still dark so I … Continue reading Never Drown

I’m spiraling the entire drive home. What’s usually my favorite way to think through things- a quiet drive by myself- feels like a tiny, rolling prison. The music is too loud. The road is too bumpy. There’s traffic when there shouldn’t be any. I’m fidgety and agitated. I talk to myself out loud, try to … Continue reading Flee

You can’t help but rush in the city. There’s no such thing as a leisurely pace. And even I- possessor of the world’s most casual saunter- find myself marching double time, weaving around tourists and strollers and slow people urgently going absolutely nowhere, just like everyone else. Somewhere around my 10th block, he catches my … Continue reading Ghost Stories

"Have you ever been in love like that?" she asks me, and I realize that maybe I'm so good at hiding my most tender parts that she really doesn't know the answer to this question. "Yeah," I say. "Yeah. That kinda love where it feels so big, and so tangible you can hardly stand to … Continue reading Pieces

I’ve been holding space in my life for lies. They aren’t covert lies. These lies are big blinking lights on a marquee. But they are pretty; the fairy tale fruit whose slick, glossy outside belies the poison beneath. What no one tells you about lies when you’re young and learning about lies the way a … Continue reading Feed me Lies

I’d forgotten what it was like to be lonely. The Dark Years gave me my Wolf Pack, my tribe of sisters and warriors and inappropriate joke tellers and safe space. I carried them home with me when I returned in all my prodigal glory, unsure of what I was getting myself into, but sure I … Continue reading 35

I have been cruel to my body. I have overfed it and starved it down. I have pushed it and poked and prodded. I have fed it laxatives when it asked for love. I have injured and ignored it. I’ve berated it for what it couldn’t do. Decried what it looked like even as it … Continue reading War in my Bones

I was seventeen. I’m not sure that’s true, but I’ve decided I was seventeen because it seems like it makes sense when I think back on those halcyon last days of high school. I was a girl, not even almost a woman, but I didn’t know that yet. Nor did he. Or maybe he didn’t … Continue reading Almost

The truth is, I limped into the new year. I got there. But I arrived head bowed and exhausted, pulling myself across the finish line on my belly and elbows. I’ve been working. Building. The last two years have felt like laying the foundation for the next part of my life, and all the back … Continue reading Happy New Year