I pressed the phone into the bone of my ear until it hurt and then hung up. I knew she wasn’t brave enough to do it, and I knew I didn’t need her to anymore. I had turned the devastation into fiction. The characters in the novel don’t reconcile. They go on living in a thorny acceptance that pricks like penance.
Read MoreStories are the friends who come back after a summer away at camp. Stories are the friends who return from abroad and remember to bring chocolates.
Read MoreBooks are mentors. They sit on the shelf for years, waiting for to us reach for them at precisely the right moment when our aims align with theirs.
Read MoreWriting is a different beast than a marathon. Writing digs inside of us, scrapes at our stomachs, and claws at our chests.
Read MoreOver the past six months, I have been visited, over and over again, by something that I don’t understand. I hear whispers at night, and I can’t close my eyes. I’m terrified of what will come next. Of what the next thing on the list will be. And then in some moments, I am overcome with gratitude that my list is so long and full of life—even though much of the past six months has been ugly.
Read MoreTo be spiritual is to research an obsession—to honor something the brain has clutched onto and won’t let go. I try my best to be a woman who participates in the world but also lays down under the surges of my brain when my eyes pop open in the night.
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