But for once, I’m feeling human — Information is nothing without context. That’s what I try to remind myself when my brain bombards me with itty-bitty-bits and pieces of everything at the same time. Some things just don’t go well together. Like sushi with a glass of milk…or moments of terror mixed with fragments of deliberate kindness…

When I think about it, it still hurts — The world tells us that predators lie in wait, comfortably camouflaged by bushes, but he was not behind the bushes. The news leads us to believe that steering clear of dark alleyways is steering clear of our assailants, but he was not shrouded in the darkness of an alleyway. All…

Give me a slingshot — My memory is delightfully odd. Childhood recollections elude me, but I can remember the commercial for Cymbalta with eerie accuracy. The wind-up wooden doll, the litany of side effects, and the words, “depression hurts.” Sometimes, I wish depression hurt, but it doesn’t. It simply feels the way I do as…

It was terrifying — I am the Colorado River in southern California. The flow of ideas is a trickle at best, something like the rhythm of a faucet that is only ever mostly off. I am mostly off. Better mostly off than hardly on, despite the fact that both strings of letters describe the…

Therein lies the beginning — Forget Jello. I feel like a bowl of soup. Liquid, Conforming to the shape of my container, I Am limitless in my capacity to take any form, I Am limited by my dependence on external Things. I feel completely and utterly destroyed, my Mind takes me back to days gone by and petite Pirate picture books…

But respect was only skin-deep — I slept for twelve hours last night, something rarer than the steak my white friends are comfortable eating. I even like my tofu well done. I work at least six days a week, and still, I wonder if I slept too long. Work is my bourbon, my lean, my kush…

The most brutal part of sexual violence is its invisibility — I heard the man’s voice through my front door: over the not-so-Christian music; over the slamming of car doors; over the curse words; over the whistling of weary windshield wipers, I heard him. “Please say hello to me.” Wet feet on the carpet, and I heard him. Wrapped in a…

Maybe love just isn’t for me — When the sky smiles upon me and the sun wraps me in its light, I am the hermit crab, in search of a new place to call home. Every shell is filled with promise, every little grain of sand is just a sign that I am that much closer to…

I am living proof of impossible things — I remember looking down at my green socks, the fuzzy kind with little grippy bits on the soles of my feet. I hadn’t come into the emergency room with these socks, but I hadn’t come into the hospital willingly, either. I hated the socks. I hated the police. I hated…