One evening when I was fifteen, back in 2009, my ballet teacher arrived at the studio wearing a shit-eating grin. Jeff loved to gossip, and he spoke with a showy Southern twang that made the juice of every secret dribble down our fingers.

When I was about five, I prayed to God as I lay in bed. I prayed for the speed of a cheetah, just like the character I had seen in a cartoon on TV. He could run away from anything.

I just remember the room dense with familiar sound, the melancholy howl of the perfectly in-tune saxophones, the electric brilliance of trumpets, a drummer with eight arms; my mother looking over at me, expectantly, as if to say, “This is what you wanted, right? This is making you happy?”

What will be will be. She was a good swimmer, and at least he was getting some exercise. 

Exposing myself to the dumbest ideas and the most hateful weirdos online triggers a chemical reaction that gives me pleasure, or something like it. A hoarder of bad ideas, stacking them all up into wobbly piles that might someday topple and crush me.

At last our molars burst forth from the gum and we emerged from the rose-colored womb of our first grade classroom.

A vacation, after all, is just geography.

SOMETIMES WHITE PEOPLE THINK THAT YELLING FACILITATES LANGUAGE ACQUISITION.

Dear              ,
I’m sorry that on your birthday you lost all your money gambling while I made $250.

Only 498 words remain. So, let's turn to death.

From the time I was seven until I started taking Seroquel, an anti-psychotic, I had this unending feeling of doom.  ‘My go to’, be that of death.

Our waitress bustles around smiling a strangely huge smile for this boring work night. My boyfriend Nick and I don’t follow football and weren’t invited to any parties, and since most Texans are either holding or attending parties the place is pretty deserted. After the waitress brings our waters she follows her normal script and asks if we want to try a signature TGI Fridays drink, but her eyes keep dancing to the bar behind us.

I felt as cold and empty as that body lying in that casket lined with fabric smooth and silky white, so different from what usually cradled my grandma’s skin, those soft, oft-washed dresses always topped with a floral apron.

05:05 am. My eyes open. A faint pearly blade of light squeezing past the blind. The distant metallic scrape of a moving tram.   

i’ve never attended a wedding and i wasn’t going to start now. my muscles were aching and my jaw was carrying a million bees, terrorizing the sides of my ears and throat. 

There is snow that falls like a snake. It comes from the sky hissing and finds a bush to hide beneath. The leaves on the branches of the River Birch are alive, again, vibrating. They are brown and

“Well, just be careful you don’t get caught with your pants down at the wrong kinda toilet.”

Sometimes I want to take the industrial strength green Korean loofah, my sandpapery mitten, and just scrub at my face until huge chunks of flesh tear away and roll into brown fleshy noodles and fall to the floor. Afterwards, I won’t be bloody and flayed, all raw nerve endings and hamburger meat, I’ll be smooth as a peeled egg, soft and firm and pliant to the touch.

My heart is open. I can feel it. It’s never open. This can’t be a coincidence. This—

My father’s disjointed rage has shocked him—I’ve seen that look before. He no longer draws from his beer even as Dad tilts his own way up.

I am no longer youthful, but not quite middle aged either. Traces of a younger me are present, though fading.

Of course, Jesus only had hyssop—a bitter wine on a wet sponge—during the passion, but that was not an option at the concession stand.

When so much energy is spent on surveying the territory, adapting to the wonders and confusions of a new place, there isn’t always room to develop as a person.

Even when I had my brief zoology phase, in elementary school, I always preferred mammals.

I no longer have that lime green vibrator.