No one of consequence sees these anymore, so let me be stark and clear. What a beautiful, wonderful, terrible, healing, hell on earth heavenly year. There is time, there is space, there are decades to go, so you’ll have to hold yourself higher I fear. Let cowards walk freely away and bask in the strength…

These are my hands, not my father’s These are my hands, small and tender Loving, giving, careful hands And bounties carried in them. These are my hands, not my father’s Magic hands of childlike wonder Soft and subtle, quiet hands Clenched in rage but I can calm them. In the mirror I shake and say…

today I was eight years old again. I can tell because the sun was shining, glinting through the trees, and in the distance a dog played with his owner, chasing a stick. two bicycles left leaned against a tree while the children ran for ice cream and laughed and laughed like eight year olds. and…

How quickly I go from tomatoes in the sun, in the sermon to screaming at the world that grows them Peeking orange and green while I am red in the face, in my voice, in my seething hatred for [tomatoes] Maybe this is the path to forgiveness, no? I hate you and hate you and…

Healing is not linear. I know. I’d be a fool to think it, I’d be young and dumb to think that growth is more or less a one-off. Grace extending ever outward to the world, save for me: I should be whole, my broken path displayed for all the earth to scoff at. Broken, bloodied…

( ) Protect your child from harm ( ) Give your child food and water every day( ) Do not ever revoke shelter from an 8 year old( ) If possible, refrain from punching children in the chest( ) Do not abandon children on the side of a dirt road because you hate your bitch…

I hate you the least because I still need some semblance of a mother. But I hate you still.

Donna and Joe had a nice house with nothing for children. Donna and Joe were friends with Darwin and we played at the cabin at the lake before he died (before he built that big one) Donna and Joe liked tanning and parties and vodka and water skis. Donna & the bitch were tanning on…

(1) My father’s latest wife collects dogs like tchotchkes. My father must have loved that — more, more, and new. ——— (2) Emily called me once, crying. Pre-2016, because I was still in the city, before I moved away from a place where Emily could call me, crying. Pre-2016, which meant she was still a…

(1) I tore apart your wedding bouquet At the tender age of 9, when you had sent me to live in the basement after the wanted children arrived. You think, I think, that I tore it in anger or hatred, but I was nine. You said to me, ”You can play with my flowers, if…