trauma

I’d rather write about my friendship with Asian women first. My mother would take over, breaching the walls of these essays, until it is only her. I have some scores to settle first—with this country, with how we have been scripted. I will only say that my mother was broken then, though I don’t know how. When illness is unnamed, the blame for it is

& i was still an insect scuttling over the ruins of battles i hadn’t fought.

how’d all these ghosts get in my yard?

There are many ways to hold water without being called a vase. To drink all the history until it is your only song.

“I’m not ready to heal,” I said as gently as I could because I was afraid how she’d respond. She nodded. “I respect that,” she said, and walked away.

Everyone wants a broken-glass girl, bought second hand. Look. The damage was already there.

Not everything floats. I am trying to learn which parts of me to let sink.

call it a siren, a hungry cat, anything that’s learned to imitate a crying child to get what it needs.

The only way to kill a Hindsight Octopus is to release it into the wild.