Florence told me to

keep writing poems

That it’s okay to pack everything

and to change your name

She told me that at some point,

every girl should cut their hair

if only just to feel the

ice bite in the breeze

Florence told me to never marry

that art itself is your muse

that rings and shackles both

tend to be steel

Explore the mountains

Get your feet wet

Don’t be afraid of mess

Florence told me, embrace it

The ugly of it all

Get dirty

Get mixed up and

unclench your hands

Get so far away that

there is no longer a you to find

Sanctioned and safe in

a no-man’s land

A few years ago this month I sent a text to my therapist. I was used to texting her in between appointments, regaling random life updates and various conversations I’ve had in my head, but it had been months since I formally scheduled one. The text was meant to be a goodbye, of sorts. At least in my mind. I had barely hit send before my phone began to ring.

I had dropped out of college almost six months prior. I hadn’t showered in over three weeks. My hair was matted to the back of my head. I refused to get up from the couch, or floor, unless I had to use the restroom; fearful of getting within walking distance of my bedroom, because it was where I had kept my then-unused meds. They called to me in a jagged voice. Begging to let me rest in the very embrace that would become my undoing. I had tried whatever I could to drown it out- headphones, music, sleeping- but was terrified of what I’d do if they got within my arm’s reach.

Your Mom’s house or the hospital, is what she told me. I had to stay on the phone with her until I made my choice. We had known one another for over two years by then, and she had perfected the firm and solid figure therapists worked so hard to attain. I will never forget the way she called me honey, how her voice shook as I cried and told her I was scared. I was alone and terrified and dirty in ways that couldn’t be fixed with scrubbing, but above all, I was just tired. I wanted to badly to give in to the voice with the jagged edges, the one telling me it would be an act of surrender rather than defeat. That there would be something poetic in my suffering.

“If you’re not in your car in the next thirty seconds, I’m calling an ambulance.”

I nodded as though she could see me. I still was not allowed to hang up the phone. I made the drive North through tears, heaving lungs telling my therapist the names of roads as I passed them. I hoped she could not hear me feverishly switching through lanes, the way I was hoping and praying I could catch someone off guard enough to send me towards the median. I was reckless. I was desperate. I so badly wanted to breathe.

When I walked through the door of my Mom’s house, greetings abandoned, I found her in the bathtub. She smiled as I walked in. I sat against the tiled edge, and upon hearing my razor-filled voice, my therapist hung up the phone.

“I think I want to kill myself.”

I spent that night curled against her chest, telling her my various plans and why I needed to go through with them. I told her of the meds, the voice, the surrender I desperately craved. I was begging for her blessing: to let me rest, to let me go. All throughout my life, I’d been forced to endure. I was tired of fighting back.

“Then I will fight for you,” she said, her voice a whisper and hand on my cheek.

“There’s no point.”

“There is,” she wiped a tear that, despite my best efforts, began to fall, “Especially when it’s you.”

I put my hand over hers. We stared into each other’s eyes, hands between us, matching our breathing until I fell asleep.

That night, I thought I’d dream of disappointment; of car wrecks and my therapist’s voice and the medication still on my nightstand. Instead, I dreamt of clouds and trees and touch that did not have to hurt. I dreamt of going back to school, of kids to help and hands to hold. It felt impossible. Surreal. Too good to ask for.

Three years, I remember thinking to myself. You have three years. If things aren’t better by then, you’ll have full permission to let go. The final sign. The curtain call. You can hold out until then. All great actors do.

This week, I’ve officially reached four. I am a teacher. I am a writer. I am the girl with brushed hair. I mend hearts and create worlds and give kids the ability to name their pain. I am thankful to Jesus, Moms, and therapists who answer their phones.

Though honestly, I think they’re all kind of one and the same.

My gaze left the American Flag hanging in the corner of my room and I took a deep breath. Announcements had just ended, and as usual, the kids automatically erupted into conversation. I steadied myself before asking them to be quiet. Usually, this doesn’t go over well; they are 12 and 13 and love nothing more than to talk about things they won’t remember the importance of in ten years. I find it my duty to remember for them. My hope is that one day I can remind them.

I don’t know if they sensed the impenetrable feeling of dread in the air, or if they realized it was permeating from me, but they stopped their conversations almost immediately. I sat atop one of their tables. They looked up at me with wide eyes.

“I have to talk to you guys about something.”

I tapped my fingers on my leg to ground myself. 31 gazes fixed on me, anxiously waiting. One of me, unable to meet any of them.

“I took the job.”

I was very honest with them about why I had missed school the Friday before. I had gotten two out-of-state job offers. Both with more money, more stability and opportunity; but despite everything falling into place in a particularly kismet way, I still wasn’t sure about what I’d do. It seemed to me (and my friends, as they frequently reminded me) that I was looking for an excuse to stay rather than a reason to go. First I had to research job growth, then stalk various Reddit threads, then take a look at the area in person to make sure the colder air wouldn’t cause my desert-laced skin to ache. The flight was short but the lists were long. All I did while in that seat was think about them.

I have thought about this conversation since the beginning of school. I didn’t foresee myself leaving my job, which I can truthfully say I love being at, after only a year; but I didn’t see my world teetering on its axis as dangerously as it is now, either.

“I leave at the end of next month.”

‘Leave’ is a word that creates a sting in my mouth. I am ten years old, and I can still remember screaming and thrashing against my Aunt’s arms as my Mom left through our front door one last time. She had scratches on her chest for a week. My throat felt quite the same. That’s the hard thing about working with kids, I think; they expect you to see all of this coming. I could only see myself.

More silence, and then an almost imperceptible whimper. It took me opening my eyes and meeting their gazes to realize it had come from me.

There was so much I wanted to say to them, in that moment. So much I had practiced in my car on the way to work through tears and sips of coffee.

I hope you know how hard I fought this.

I can’t afford to pay my bills.

I will always be part of your life.

You may forget me one day, and that’s okay.

I’m tired all the time.

I feel like I’m betraying you.

It hasn’t even been a day since I’ve cried.

There was so much I wanted to say to them, in that moment. So many words I couldn’t shape well enough if I even tried. How do you tell a child you love that you are leaving them? I had always been the one left behind.

So, after a moment of silence, I said what I wished I had heard that night, at ten years old, in between dry heaves and cries:

“You know this isn’t because of you, right?”

They nodded. Some of them even smiled.

I got through the rest of my classes in a very familiar cadence. There were tears throughout the day, but none of them were from me. Mine were reserved for when I was home. When I was alone and the anticipatory ache of missing them settled against my bones. There, I needed to be their anchor. I needed to be solid. I needed to be someone they could scream against, a chest they could claw.

“You have to do what’s best for you, Ms. Grace,” one of them told me later that day, leaning against my shoulder, “We know that and will always love you.”

Leaving my students but finding myself. I think they may be one in the same.

Please be careful

I worry about you all the time

I can tell that you’re struggling to eat

I don’t like dress code, or detention

or when another teacher hurts your feelings

I love your outfits

I have depression and

my biggest fear is that you can tell

When I was younger I loved to sing

I was a mean teenager

I wish I was better for you

Sometimes I don’t want to listen to myself as well

I need a hug

I cry after being with you some days

not necessarily because of the bad

I’ve always wanted to learn the cello

I adore classical music but

in Middle School I joined band

I hang your drawings up

I tell my friends about you

I’ve abandoned myself more times than I can count

I know what it feels like to be scared of adults

I’ve tried to leave my past behind

it always finds me

When I was a kid I often felt left out

Sometimes I don’t really know what to do

You look at me and see promise

I tend to look at you and see me

When teaching there’s a scary truth

something I resent and at the same time take peace in:

I’ll always need you more than you’ll ever need me.

Promise me you’ll keep going

You’re going to get out of your house

I love it when you laugh, even if it’s at me

You are my purpose

I’m scared you’ll forget me one day

When I’m with you, there’s nowhere I’d rather be

Always cover your mouth when you cough

I will always be here

I will never stop loving you

please tell me that it’s enough.

if when I die

God asks me who

He should send me back

down to be, I will tell Him that

He already knows

I close my eyes

I wake up in nightclothes

there’s an empty bed to my left

a cry to my right

I set my feet on cold wood and

walk into the night

her door creaks when it opens

but not from disuse

books line all her walls

filling color where she told me

there was once only blue

her hair, at a time all fire

now strawberry sweet

in the crib she lay

wailing- and stops when

she sees me

I smile

I wonder if she recognizes my face

if she remembers the tears

she knew only as Grace

I pick her up gently

and hold her in the space

between my chest and my chin

and thank God for this place

don’t cry, I would tell her

everything is alright

there are dark things to meet

but never to fright

you have me, I would say

and your whole life too

one where you don’t need to be strong

where love is something to be, not

something to do

you can have it all over again

you can dance on a stage and sing

you can have the freedom

you deserve even if it means

you’ll never have me

I take her small hand

and look into her eyes

still green as sea foam

and skin

feather soft underneath mine

she falls asleep against me

and it’s only then that I cry

Mother and Daughter once again

a bond stronger than time

Valentine’s Day is my favorite holiday. I never want to get married.

Both are true in the way no two moles are identical but can lay atop the same skin. When asked by family what my life plans were, as a child I spoke of careers and traveling and no men. I was always met by the same hollow laughter, the same promises that One day, things will be different. I’ve found that while my tastes have changed and matured as I’ve aged, my answers have not. I want to publish my book and live in my own house. I want animals and writing and creaky wood floors and I don’t want a man to be part of any of it.

My aversion to anything romantic, while it is now something I have embraced growing around rather than out of, at one time was deeply isolating. Instead of getting hand-drawn signs from school mates asking me to be their Valentine, I savored the candy and card my Mom always left on the kitchen counter before leaving for work. I was never asked to a school dance and went on my first date when I was 18. When talking with friends I’d assure it was compromise. Really, in my mind, it was control.

Some may call it asexual. Others apathetic, while my therapist would say it’s a result of trauma. No matter what it is, though, or where it came from, the only thing I know for certain is something I reiterated to her years ago during an appointment, a claim that still bounces around my head whenever I see white daisies or an engagement ring:

“I am the only thing that’s ever been fully mine.”

I am 24 and have had one boyfriend I could’ve truly seen myself marrying. We were friends for years, and while seemingly knowing my darkest corners and claiming to love me regardless, he made a sexual advance on me before we even kissed. Despite incessant texts and letters in the mail, I never cried, or talked to him again. I never will.

When I first told my therapist, her normally sharp green eyes melted to sea foam right in front of me. She smiled for a moment, nodded, and that was that. It took me a long time to not see living as a selfish act. I have had to convince myself that I do not inherently owe anyone simply for my existence. Unlike the women in my family who have come before me, I will not let anything, let alone something as stupid and simple as my feelings, take that away.

Today at work, my kids were buzzing with pre-Valentine’s Day nerves. I teach Middle School which means the days prior to the holiday are full of flowers and candies and Ms. Grace, guess who I’m asking out? This week, I heard about more dates than I could count and smiled through every one of them; sitting and wondering which students I’d be recounting that very moment to in twenty years, perhaps over coffee or at their wedding. Their excitement for life- and each other- is one of the many reasons I love being a teacher. A day all about love being my favorite holiday is, for lack of a better term, self-explanatory.

Before the bell rung for first period, one of my students came into my room with a poster board that was almost as tall as her when held up. It was pink and purple with her handprints all over and, upon seeing it, I was acutely reminded of the holidays spent alone in my Middle School band locker and letters I’ve received but will never return. I did what all teachers do when faced with their own ache and smiled anyways. The text on it was intricately hand drawn, asking whoever the lucky receiver was, as I had guessed, to be her Valentine.

My eyes met hers. “Who is this for?”

There are many things a child is. Heartless is not one of them.

“It’s for you, Ms. Grace.”

A box of candy was gingerly placed into my hand with a note from both the student and her Mom. You are my best friend, it read. I love you.

There have been moments in my life where, within the whirlwind of emotion, I have been able to escape myself long enough to cement the fact that I’d remember it forever. This was only one of many, and as little me predicted, a man has never been part of them. My students usually are. I have lived a life filled with safety and chocolate. I have held hands and wiped tears and been called someone’s home.

Valentine’s Day is my favorite holiday. I never want to get married. Despite what people may think though, it’s due to an abundance of love- not the absence of it.

I lost both of my parents, and my sister, when I was ten years old.

‘Lost’ is a word I have strategically picked. It came to me after years of trying different ones to feel which was most comfortable coming out of my mouth. It was a project to me of sorts, when people began asking more questions, to find the one that could be most truthful without leaving an everlasting sting. ‘Left’ felt too harsh. ‘Missed’ not harsh enough. But ‘Lost’ was the perfect medium in which to convey the depth of what had happened without having to say anything else at all. These words, and their dissection, is where my hurt begins.

My parents were drug addicts. They were abusive and they could be downright scary. I think that part of my life, in a way, is easiest for others to digest. It’s black-and-white. You don’t need extra context for horror. What most people don’t acknowledge, though, is that they weren’t always. Growing up, my family seemingly remembered them for only their worst; the scabbed cheeks and thin arms and ever-blown pupils. They used “what they did to you” as a bargaining chip to pay for their hate. I felt like I couldn’t say either of their names without a hush of silence coming over the room right after; one that curled around my spine and squeezed like a vice. I couldn’t claim them as my parents anymore. As such, I wasn’t a daughter. It was suffocating to be surrounded by so much absence.

I understood their apprehension, and in a way, even appreciated it. That doesn't mean I liked it. Instead of voicing my feelings I did what I had always been taught to and absorbed it and adjusted accordingly. Late at night or when I’m particularly overwhelmed, I myself, even over a decade later, find myself having frequent flashbacks of similar. I remember helping them shower and the look in their eyes that meant they didn’t recognize me. But in all honesty, I mostly remember them for the way they tucked me in at night. I remember how I felt laying between them in bed and when they held my hands. Soft. Secure. Like nothing would loosen their grip.

About four years before I became a self-proclaimed orphan, my Grandma gave me a bright yellow compass. We had all lived with one another at the time- my Grandparents, Parents, and I- and our home, the steadfast comfort found within it, was something I can never get back. It’s something, I fear, that I will always be trying to replicate.

“This used to be Papa’s,” she told me, placing it in my palm and curling my fingers around the plastic. I furrowed my brows.

“Why are you giving it to me?”

“So you can always find your way back home,” she smiled, “Back to us.”

I have thought of this compass often in the years since. I think it’s childish how much I yearn for it. It wasn’t anything sentimental; a cheap piece of plastic I assume my Grandparents had gotten in one of their monthly Scholastic mailers. I lost it when my Grandpa was killed a couple years later and it didn’t weigh more than a pound. I don’t think that if I had it I’d even know how to use it.

Yet there is a small part of me, with pigtails and a crooked grin, that has always wondered if my Grandma was right; if that was the only thing standing between me and them. I wondered that if I still had it now, had found it in the wreckage and somehow pointed it at the right angle, if I could be led back to what was never meant to be taken from me. If it could lead me to an absolution greater than the choosing of words.

For a long time, before I came across ‘Lost’, I honestly wished I could just say they died. I have never been one for ambiguity. I didn’t know how to tell people that they weren’t in a coffin but that that didn’t make them any less cold; that they were somewhere on this Earth breathing and living but it wasn’t as the parents I knew. I spent years on third-party websites trying to track them down, hacking into emails and old Facebook accounts in hopes of finding even a hint of where they’d gone. A piece of confirmation that they were somewhere I could still follow. I just needed that first breadcrumb, I thought. That movement of the needle. Point me in the right direction, and I’ll be on my way. Tell me that I will find you. Show me how to get home.

I never got that confirmation, though, and I never got the compass back. I carried my grief silently until it absorbed into my very marrow. At first it was heavy. Now, it’s confirmation. The pain itself has become the direction.

I think all of my writing, in some way, is me trying to be believed. Look at my grief, I want to tell people. Hold it and feel its weight and tell me it’s real. Look at how much I had, at who they were. Look at how much I lost.

They were not just addicts, in the same way that they are not dead. They were boisterous and funny and watched reality television. My Dad loved to cook and my Mom loved to sing. They were wind chimes and yard sales and riding on my Dad’s handlebars. They were cigarette smoke in an oversized sweatshirt. Hot coffee breath and lullabies to put you to sleep.

Most importantly though: They were mine. They always will be.

I have never been good at connecting with others the right amount. I either connect too deeply or not at all.

As I’ve seen people make friends over the years, I’ve noticed that they usually have one person they can turn to for everything and vice-versa. It seems easy. Meant to be. They rest in the knowledge that they are one another’s forever.

I don’t think I’ve ever experienced that in the way I’ve always wanted. There is no line for me between apathy and codependence. I am either someone’s everything or nothing to them at all. When I am not someone’s first choice, I would rather be alone; and I have spent my entire life trying to figure out why.

It became especially noticeable throughout high school and college. I was surrounded by people my age, both by proximity and circumstance, yet felt like no one could actually see or relate to me. It made no sense as to why I couldn’t connect with these people. I was with them daily. Hell, I even talked regularly with some of them. But as conversation flowed, while they were talking about parties and fights they got into with their boyfriends, in the back of my mind a small voice kept reminding me that I was not on par with them. That I was not one of them, and never would be. They don’t know how much worse it could get, it would tell me. They don’t know that this doesn’t matter at all.

It’s not that I don’t think they have a right to their feelings. Even years later, despite my best efforts I tend to come off as brash when giving advice, when in my mind, I’m trying to validate. But the truth is: they really don’t know. The way they won’t even remember that boyfriend’s name in thirty years. What it will feel like to one day lose their parents. It’s like I’ve been entrusted with a cosmic secret that I can’t tell them about it in order to preserve their innocence. Don’t tell them how bad things will be, because they need this now. Don’t tell them one day they’ll be suffocating, because for all they know the air is clear. It’s exhausting being the one who knows. Even more-so when no one else seemingly does.

My Mom once told me that the hardest part about being young is that you experience such big emotions without the experience necessary to decipher them. That is how I imagine myself in these instances. Something I have experienced will always be the worst thing someone could ever fathom. The reference is off. The data is skewed. As such, I am an anomaly.

I wish desperately that I could engage in life at the same degree as they do. I want to do karaoke and get mad when I’m off-key and talk about dating like it’s the only thing that matters in the world. I want to travel the world and have sex and get angry at people without fear that they’ll leave me. But I can’t. Because no matter what joy I hold or sorrow I feel, the voice always reminds me: After all of this is said and done, you will either be left with a memory or nothing at all.

The truth will set you free, they always say. I wonder if they knew the truth itself could be the cage.

I’ve been alone longer

than shiplap can brine

leather helm and tall mast and

bones withered and dried

small things used to please me

a thrift store, her hand in mine

I braided hair and made poems

just to sing, not to write

but there’s no sound this deep

and only few things can rhyme with

the turbulence and flounder and

passage of time

the bones told me to leave her

that to live I need shine

but Laocoön was all marble and

even he had to die

they told me there’s better

bare teeth begged me to hide

but where they see a monster

I can only know pride

so I keep my voice low and

my feet stay up high and

I let my hair fall where

it used to hit light

and when her tentacle finds

me they won’t see me cry

because how can I not be of sea

when this mother is all mine

Here’s the thing. I don’t like being depressed.

You may read that sentence as you would someone telling you they need water to survive: with an eyebrow raised and a “well, duh” on your tongue. Someone saying they don’t like being depressed is akin to them saying they don’t like being put in a pit full of vipers. But vipers aren’t always keen to kill, and pits, at some point, are meant to be filled. This is where the tension begins.

I was 12 years old when I was diagnosed.

“You won’t feel this way forever,” the doctor told me, her voice soft and careful.

Forever was a long time to a girl who didn’t want to see tomorrow. I still remember my Mom’s eyes as the doctor talked to her, wide and watery, and how the first medication they gave me didn’t do anything but make my mouth dry. Then the second did the same, and then the third, until I eventually ran out of medicines to hide and diagnoses to blame and decided to take my shame straight to the source: Myself.

It wasn’t a chemical that was the matter. If it was, there at least would be something to actually fix. Instead, it was me. And I would be stuck with me, I realized, sitting there on the hard plastic seat with my doctor’s hand on my knee, for as long as I live.

So, I dealt with it. The poor hygiene, the inability to get out of bed, the sleeping at odd hours. I stopped eating. I stopped talking. I told my Mom I was taking my meds (I wasn’t) and told my friends at school I had eaten breakfast (I hadn’t) and told my teachers I would turn in the homework (I wouldn’t). The weight of my own indifference became a coat to me, one I opted to wear all the time. It was only inevitable I grew comfortable within it.

Years later, with a new diagnosis and when the apathy turned to mania, I tried to do what I had always done and simply endure. Wait it out. Relish in the warmth. But the jagged edges were something I wasn’t used to; so unpredictable and hard to hold that I began to fear the eventual comedown instead of the feeling itself. Instead of making me numb to the world around me, it made me hypersensitive to it. Instead of waterlogged movements, I was constantly shaking from nerves. I came down from episodes with the likeness of someone going outside for the first time after an earthquake; on trembling legs and accounting for the destruction. It was evil, I thought after another failed medication, to be allowed to hold the world in your hands only to have it taken away. You won’t feel this way forever, the doctor had told me. What used to be a steady comfort became nothing more than a threat.

So, no. I don’t like being depressed. But I find it more comfortable at times than joy. I’ve noticed that no matter the scenario I am still always looking for the forever. And, in my experience, I think that depression is the closest thing to it. It feels infinite. It feels familiar. It feels like a coat I know will always be in my exact size. I will not do this, because I will not be able to get out of bed. I will not feel this, because I will not be able to feel anything at all.

I had never realized this to be my thought process until a couple years back during an appointment with my therapist. I told her I had stopped brushing my hair again. That I hadn’t showered in almost a week. She had told me to spend some time with friends and I steadfastly refused.

“Why?” She asked me. “Why give into those feelings?”

I chewed my lip.

“Because they’re mine.” At the time, all I thought deserved to be.

She picked up her mug and took a long sip. Her gaze never wavered.

“Your life is, too. Your happiness.”

And so are the maxed out credit cards and my crooked spine and the thousands of empty pill bottles in the top drawer of my dresser.

“I don’t want it.” My hands shook from where they rested on my jeans.

“Well, it wants you,” she paused for a moment. “It’s been right in front of you for years. Knocking at your door, begging to be let in. So what are you going to tell it?”

It was then that I realized the depression wasn’t mine. Neither is joy. They never were, because they aren’t me. They are simply visitors. Someone I can ask to leave early, if need be. Someone I can choose to let in.

“Tell it that I’m here.” She smiled. “That I’ll open the door.”

I did. I still do. It’s an active choice to make, but I’ve found that since inviting her in, she comes inside gently. Never accepting my apologies for being late or with a pill bottle in her hand. Joy comes to me in my friends, in a good book, in the therapist who saved my life. Depression in tangled hair, the rain, in half-faded memories of my childhood.

Regardless of who it is, I set a place at the table for them. I notice only after she’s inside that she is wearing a coat.

“That looks heavy,” I say, “let me take it.”

I hang it up. She smiles. My hands do not shake.

Good Morning

Good Morning, Miss

Do we have specials?

How did you sleep?

I need to use the restroom

I didn’t eat last night

I think today we have P.E.

I got a hundred!

How did you spell that?

Have you noticed that I’m really trying?

Yes, I have

I’m so proud of you

I wish that we could have more time.

Welcome back

Voices down

Yes, please sharpen it before I speak

Can you sit with me?

I missed you too

You are loved

if by no one else then

always by me.

Belief in God is about the not-knowing. Otherwise, it would be called Fact, not Faith.

Growing up, I didn’t understand this concept. I hadn’t been to church, but knew of the people who came out of the steeple by our house every Sunday morning; the ones who always looked polished and firm, so uptight in their pressed blouses and suits like marionettes posed for play. I imagined them as just having shaken hands with a glowing figure, hands burning with the after-effects of touching something holy. I thought that I would never do the same. That any God I had to dress uncomfortably for was not one I wanted to meet.

I remember at nine years old being asked by my Mom what I believed in. Her dreadlocks were tied above her head and the scabs on her face still not fully healed. They wouldn’t be, for quite some time. I thought for a moment before answering.

“People,” I replied, my eyes on the carpet beneath me, “Souls.”

“That’s very profound,” She told me, her eyebrows raised and eyes soupy. We were silent for a few moments. I didn't know if there was a God but I knew the way she looked at me as though I were a divine creation. She looked at me for a few seconds, the only thing good she ever created, as she used to remark. Finally, she put her hand on mine.

“I think I’d have to agree.”

I don’t want to say I’ve always had Faith. Sometimes, when life gets especially jagged, I even wonder if I ever did. What I can say, though, is that since I was a girl, I knew there was something between me and those I loved. Even those I didn’t. Something I felt in the air at the tips of my fingers but couldn’t name. Something that is, very much, not fact.

When I was nineteen, a neighbor who was more of a step-in parent called me as I was getting home from work. I am now an English teacher, but at the time worked with kids at an after-school program. I loved it. I sat in the car taking deep breaths before I was able to go in the house, on the off chance she’d see me stumbling out of the car and mistake my despair for anger. Cancer, she told me. Stage 4. Incurable. I thought back to my Mom that night and how I never got to see the scabs on her face turn to scar, how I couldn’t bear losing a parent more than a few times. How no one ever should be faced with having to.

I locked the door to my bedroom after getting inside. I put a crystal on my head and my back against the floor. The hardwood dug into my shoulder blades like gravel and finally, after weeks of the not-knowing, I sobbed.

“Whatever is out there,” I said aloud, my voice barely a whisper but the echo of the empty room reverberating in the space between my hips and spine, “Universe, or God, or energies. Whoever you are, I don’t care. Make yourself known to me. Please. I can’t do this. I can’t do this again. I can’t do this alone.”

That night, I fell asleep with dust under my clothes and an ache inside of my chest. Tear stains marked my face like gloss. I was a doll, a twisted version of the marionettes I once mocked. One without a savior. One meant to lose, over, and over, and over, until I succumbed to being torn apart by my own strings.

I woke to the sound of my phone ringing. Blearily, I looked at the Caller I.D. and brought it up to my ear, pushing my hair out of the way.

“Hello?”

My neighbor. Her voice sounded sad after hearing mine. It shouldn’t be her responsibility to carry me when she was already wilting, I thought.

“Don’t freak out, but I need you to come over.”

I immediately got up without question. The goodbye I wasn’t able to say to my parents laid heavy on my tongue. The sun was harsh against my eyes. I was breathless when walking in despite only having to walk across the street.

When her husband let me in the door, I scanned his eyes for anticipatory grief. All I found was anticipation. When I took a step towards the couch, I saw her sitting up, perfectly fine, a Bible in her lap.

“Honey, I’ve been wanting to do this for forever. Have you ever heard the Gospel?”

I had not. So, she told me.

Her along with her husband sat with me for six hours. I told her about every doubt, about the marionette people I didn’t want to become. They held my hands and wiped my tears. Stage 4 cancer, and I was the one whose body was passing away.

I went to church for the very first time that weekend, wearing combat boots and jeans. I did not feel stiff when I left the building, nor did my hands burn.

When I began working with kids, I felt for the first time that I was seeing the world through the lens of this higher being I had always felt but could never name. Or, namely, the way my Mom looked at me.

In front of me were the most innocent of souls pouring their love out so loosely without fear of who the excess got on. The ones who gave me nicknames and asked me how tall I was, wonder in their eyes as I told them that one day, they’d be this tall, too. They held hands openly. They kissed my cheeks.

He had been running to me this whole time, I thought. Just like the kids at work who were eager for second snack, needed a hug, or found an oddly shaped flower. The ones falling in anticipation. The ones waiting for me to, for just a moment, look their way.

However, I may be biased. Like I said, I am a teacher, which I thoroughly believe to be the Holiest job of all. But I am also a Daughter. Of my Mom, my Dad, and all the parents in between; human, divine, or something else entirely.

So I now hold Him, whoever He may be, like my students. I take the flower from His palm and ask Him what His favorite method of Figurative Language is.

“Metaphor,” I imagine Him telling me, “Easy.”

Yes, I would respond. It really is.

My Mother’s love is the only secret

I have never

been given

the others She keeps

in the palm of my hand

between sun-dried figs and a reason

She tells me She’s ready by the

nails in my hair that say

keep your spine straight through their pleading

they know they’re not like us and

never will be and that’s why when

we feed them they’re screaming

it’s what they deserve

for being sat in a chair between a daughter

and her Mother’s provision

She says pink is the color of

predisposed flesh and

of course fruit will rot if not eaten

so my shoulders uncurl and

my eyes start to close and

my fingers are sickly and rigid

and they’re more red than pink

down the throat of the thing

between me and my Mother’s forgiveness

her nails are still sharp and

my back is still turned when she

tells me She’s one for tradition

that my hands can now hold

the weight of death that’s not mine and

it’s exactly what She’d always envisioned

She cradles my jaw and

wipes off my plump cheeks as She assures me

all knowledge is wisdom

that the truth hurts at first but

if you’re the one shoving you won’t ever

be the one to feel it

but as the cries start to still

and their throat starts to loosen I still wish

I could someday release them

because my Mother’s love is given

in secrets and I’m scared I will

always be the one to keep them.

When I was nineteen I went to a psychic.

He was tall, lanky, and had bright blonde hair sticking out the top of his head as though he’d just finished running his fingers through the frayed citrine strands. I was in a proverbial waiting area composed of two oak-stripped chairs as I watched for the luminescent doorway beads to part with his exit from the session before me. I was surprised a psychic alongside the back end of Route 66 could be seemingly so fully booked. My body was barely taking up one of two old chairs next to the cash register where, moments prior, I had bought a slab of malachite. I wrung my hands together in my lap. The chair creaked with the shift.

I had seen on a cable show a woman who was dying slowly. She went to a psychic to ask if he could tell her when she’d die, or, hopefully and against all odds, how she could live. She was tearful as she sat in front of the wrinkled, eccentric man and begged him to help her. He looked at her and the iridescent ball in front of him softly, muttering something about December and open windows; and it must’ve brought her comfort despite her glum nature because in the end, she thanked him. I think sometimes salvation can feel heavy, even in an open hand.

I didn’t have cancer and I didn’t need deliverance. I wasn’t dying in a way anybody could see. It was simply something I thought to do while driving in from out of town, and there- sitting in the chair that groaned when I leaned a certain way, despite not having eaten a full meal in weeks prior- I felt as though I was taking up too much space. The sun catchers swaying against the stained glass window and the anticipation of meeting a man I didn’t know reminded me of time spent with my parents. When he came out to get me, the beads parting as though they were some bright blue and green aura, he rubbed his hands together and smiled before shaking my hand. I stood, putting the malachite in my pocket. I wondered if it was to prevent me from feeling gel between my fingers.

He took me to a room that smelled of lemon and menthol. Before taking a seat, he asked me how my day was, to which I replied:

“You probably already know.” He laughed. Perfunctory.

“That’s not how it works,” he smiled, sitting down in front of me. “Though sometimes I wish it did.”

I nodded. I kept my purse on my lap, the stone in my pocket. He brought out a deck of cards. Tarot, my mind supplied. Not unlike the kind Mom had in the back of her bedside drawer.

“Why are you here?” His voice was soothing as he shuffled and set the cards down. I was grateful for the anchor, as seeing their familiar patterns had started filling my blood and bones with adrenaline; the familiar kind that came whenever I was reminded of my parents.

“I don’t know.” He nodded, his hair stiff as he did.

“Let’s find out.”

He started turning cards over one by one, and instead of watching his fingers I watched his face. I do this often, with any kind of man or person regardless of psychic ability; subconsciously trying to find the lie beneath their skin before it even has time to make it out of their mouths. I want to pinpoint where exactly it lay and feel the satisfaction when I’m able to carve it out, and lay it in front of them; their words resting in my hand before they’re even able to speak them into existence. His eyes lifted back to me, his brow furrowed as though deep in thought. I wondered if he knew I was onto him.

“You’ve been through a lot in your life, haven’t you?” His blue eyes looked all too sad. My brown ones were all too still. Everyone has been through something, once. Everyone has been through something deemed a lot.

“Yes.”

“But you won’t tell me what it was.”

“No.” He cleared his throat.

“Right.”

He let out a breath and grabbed a card to the left before setting it in front of me. It was gold and purple, similar to my Elementary School colors.

“You’re creative.”

“No.”

“Yes, you are.”

I stared blankly, irritated. I thought of schedules and unfinished projects and never being able to color between the lines. This wasn’t how it’s supposed to work, I thought. He’s supposed to tell me something I already know. Not convince me of something not even there.

“I’ve written three books. One of them being a memoir,” he looked at me incredulously, “I know a writer when I see one.”

My blood no longer thrummed. It stilled. I have too often relied on my pre-conceived evaluations of people for my feelings of safety and contentment. I had felt my synthesis to be, in this instance, satisfactory. Yet I did not see those words coming. Maybe because, I thought, they weren’t a lie.

“My book.” He smiled.

“Yes, your book.”

His teeth were oddly white and he leaned back in his chair. There was a breath stuck in my chest heavier than the malachite against my thigh.

“Did you know about the book because you’re a psychic or because you’re an author?” He laughed.

“Maybe because they’re a bit one and the same.”

We were silent for a few moments. Anyone working with meat knows there is a moment when being peeled apart that the nerves exposed begin to shiver. He laid both his hands on the table, palms up, right on top of the cards he had so neatly organized just moments before. I looked at the wrinkles between his knuckles, at the hair they’d just raked through, and laid my hands in his. I closed my eyes. I breathed.

I told him the book was the only thing that’s ever been fully mine. That it was about my life, or lack, I believed at the time, thereof; and that while I didn’t know its title I knew I already had all I needed to tell. He kept my hands in his palms, occasionally running his thumb across the back when I began to stutter and stare. I didn’t give details, whether out of fear or preservation I’m still not sure, but he simply held me from across the table as I detailed different writing tools I’d tried, the various practices I’d adopted, the drafts upon drafts I had written and typed only for them to end up in the trash bin. All in hopes of telling the world a story I knew it needed. One that was only ever mine.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever actually do anything with it.” His eyes were still on mine.

“You will.”

“I mean, it’s for me at the end of the day, not anyone else.”

“Yes.”

“And publishing books, at least from what I’ve heard, is hard. I don’t even know how to do it. People have to actually want to read it.”

“They are going to.”

I think of him often, even now, five years later. The way I left that room and cried when I got into the car, the ghost of his thumb still stroking the back of my hand. How his gentleness wasn’t something I’d accounted for but was now something I knew I couldn’t have lived without. He didn’t tell me I’d almost actually die mere months later, or what the title of my book would end up being. But he sat in front of me, eyes on mine as though my story was the only one he’d ever heard, with a grip steady enough to hold both my hands and heart. He believed in me. I think the least I could do is at some point, maybe even today, believe in him.