❝ There are poems
inside of you
that paper can’t
handle. ❞

❝ Don’t let yourself be controlled by three things: people, money, or past experiences.
— Anonymous ❞

❝ And I think the thing that terrifies me most is that one day, you’ll be the story I’ll tell my daughter, when she’s curled up in bed, wrapped in blankets and heartbreak, when she hasn’t eaten anything in days but the voicemails he left her, when she hasn’t been able to sleep because the goodbye that broke her shatters her bones all over again every time she closes her fucking eyes. And I’ll climb into bed with her and she’ll lay her head on my lap and I’ll try to brush him out of her hair and her tears will soak through my shirt and I’ll tell her about the boy I met when I was sixteen, who sat next to me in math class, who I fell in love with after two weeks, who saved me, who fucking destroyed me. And I’ll tell her about how it hurt. It hurt so badly it almost killed me. It hurt so badly my mother stopped going to work so she could stay home and make sure I didn’t take too many pills. And then I’ll tell her about how it got better. How it stopped hurting. How I stopped bleeding. My mother went back to work. I got out of bed. But I won’t tell her that sometimes I still have dreams about you and can hardly breathe the next day or about the pictures of you I have hidden in the attic. ❞

❝ When I was younger, I felt like the walls wanted to swallow me whole.
Momma used to spend fifteen minutes brushing out my curls. 
Eventually, it became thirty minutes of the hot iron, flattening, burning.
Emily was the most popular girl’s name in 1996. 
I don’t ever remember feeling like God knew I was there.
It was a childhood of bruised elbows and chipped pink nails, of a tireless desire for the universe to take notice.
Papa always smiled, until he stopped. Papa was always the hero, until he wasn’t.
I never learned how to see my body as something beautiful. I don’t know how to forgive for something like that.
I learned gentleness at my mother’s hand. I learned shame at my father’s knee.
My voice was eternally trapped in my throat.
Every summer, Momma stayed at home with us. I never thanked her.
My sister broke through this world like the light, unapologetic and blinding. Seventeen years later, she burns even brighter. She’s still learning the taste of ‘sorry’ in the mouth. 
I don’t think the taste of it ever left mine. 
Do all memories sound like confessions?
Are we always sorry for how we become?
When I was six years old, I wanted to dig up dinosaur bones. 
I wanted proof that there was a world before this one. 
When I was eight years old, I wanted to live in the stars. 
I wanted proof that there was a world besides this one. 
No one ever knew how to tell me terrible things. I learned tragedy on my own. 
Momma never smiled with her teeth. I’m always trying to forget that. 
All my sister and I ever did was pretend. 
I told my first lie when I was six years old. I didn’t have a name for guilt then. 
I’ve never been able to sleep through the night. 
I used to look for myself in my father’s face. 
I never understood sadness. 
I used to think that the world was good, that we were good. 
I’m still trying to hold on to that. ❞