"If I were to even write it today, it would be a very different book. It might be better in some ways, but it would be probably less emotionally true to how I was feeling."

“Writing poetry has trained my eye and ear to look and listen to my day with deep attention.”

“She’s hot as velvet”

Maybe I’m still working from a place of collective composition toward a singular voice, trying to derive one true chord from that old cacophony. The steel strings went slack—too much tension over too much time.

“Every day is an offering, and I am giving bits of myself to you. I am overcome with a sudden grief.”

“That’s how oracle cards work, she told me, they guide you where you need to go. I don’t believe in anything, but I’d like to.”

“What happens when you narrativize something that has that initiatory burden of transness, you take these steps to bring that narrative into actuality—to bring the inside outside.”

It is as if by submerging yourself in a horror story, you will be unmade, but you can also re-emerge, different than before, if you choose. The overused adage is true: we imagine horrors in order to cope with real ones.