‘Of the dead, [say] nothing but good.’ It’s bad advice, though. Instead, speak truthfully of the dead: the bad and the good. It’s the only way to be true to ourselves, because there is enough good and bad in all of us for a lifetime of stories.

This is you: raising your glass at a party, or so I was told, and laughing with my friends, toasting the end of alimony–its taste, bitter and bilious in my mouth, I was just as eager to spit it out, wipe it away.

Whether or not someone had sex in high school becomes an unimportant fact when you spend your days changing diapers. You realize that it never really mattered to begin with. Everyone ends up in such ordinary places, regardless of hookups in movie theaters or on parent’s beds.

This was a one-armed conflict a wounded lesson left on the battlefield beyond and the earth below where stories no longer make a sound but wheels go round and round

I can’t remember a time I ever felt excitement at his homecoming. Though, I am sure I had to have once. I’m sure there were days in the beginning, before I knew who he really was, that I felt happy when he was coming home. Now, when I see his headlights come down the driveway, it’s ominous.

Today she cut her tresses for Amini – Killed by morality police for baring her hair. While the vice squad flaunted their long beard Amini was slain for an untucked strand of hair.

The first time I saw my mother was well over two decades after her death.

I cannot let you sleep. No, not now, not after everything I’ve done to resurrect you. It’s fruitless. I shake God’s hand and the deal won’t go through. Transaction pending.

When I was growing up, I sometimes felt like a monster because of my resentment of my mother. It grew from a sense of injustice, of being treated harshly and unfairly, weighing me down. After my mother died, my father accused me of not loving her. “I did love her. I loved her as children love their mothers. But she didn’t love me.

Society gives fat bodies superpowers, we are the only ones who can be both entirely too much and shockingly incomplete, an overdone ostentation and a work in progress.

you promise each other that you will, that you’ll stay like this forever, because you’re all sixteen and none of you know yet how quickly people will burst in and out of your lives (how could you possibly know?)

Trying to ignore my pressing worries and the rapid swelling taking place under my scarf, I chose to continue on with the rest of my last day with my friends. A couple laughs and glasses of Sangria later, I laid in my non-air conditioned, 103-degree hostel bunkbed restless, yet unable to move. I don’t particularly believe in hell, but my guess is it would be something similar to this.

how long has this been going on for? ever since mirrors became cruel things carved to cut through skin and numbers.

You fear the dawn and the dusk. That’s when I hold you down and pin you between my legs and weep as I inject you. I have to do it. I am the beloved abuser. We hold each other tightly and we do not talk about it. We are together.

If only the walls could tell people my truth, speak upon my behalf as my personal sleuth.

Our text threads began with scores, sometimes our guesses or what made the day’s puzzle challenging. From there, we flowed into conversations about details my mother might not have shared had our contact stayed limited to a weekly call: The way the tumor in her pelvis made it hard to get comfortable.

when will smallness equate to the endless possibility to grow?

For the remainder of my time in the hospital, I wear short sleeves. I’m not ashamed anymore.

on my first gay date she told me her father’s a deadbeat and i told her what I think of god. she said hey maybe he’s hiding in plain sight and i said you mean She.

Even though the forests are naked shivering, the seas drowning, and animals imprisoned, it’s all still a kind of good.