I woke up in the ICU a few days after I had coded twice during a scheduled upper endoscopy. As my eyelids fluttered open, I felt no pain, but once my eyes focused on the ventilator blocking my view beyond my nose, all my agony came flooding back. A silent, failed patient, I quickly tried to recall where and who I was.

There’s a chance the glue won’t hold, but it doesn’t mean it’s worthless. Instead, we can rebuild. We’ll change it into a shape we’ve never seen, and maybe we’ll come to love it far more than what it once was.

I was in third grade the first time I was teased for not shaving my legs. If my memory serves me, the specific line of advice I was given was that I ought to “go back to the zoo.” I knew that grown women were expected to amend their body hair to that of a sphynx cat, but I hadn’t anticipated being confronted with this standard so early on. I suppose I have my Italian ancestors to thank for gifting me leg hair long and dark enough to be seen across a classroom.

So, I was awake for it last night. Through my window I watched it disappear. The moon gathered me up, stood me nearly naked in front of its shadow self, brought me back to awe. How I saw something vanish but knew it was still there.

When it was bright enough to call it morning, he wished me a happy birthday and we rose to leave. When we did, I spotted the old bastard over my shoulder, and grabbed my friend across a creaky wooden bridge. We watched the sun crest, the wind whistling through the reeds, the sting of saltwater in our noses.

She never realized how much she wouldn’t miss the slow ooze down her throat. Never thought she’d wish she could recall the last time she’d filled the hole in herself with the cold spirit of bubbly, smoldering sweet until it wasn’t.

Sometimes I actually try to use some of the coping skills I talk about all day and sometimes they work. Often, when I think about doing something I advised earlier in the day, I am struck by how completely worthless and stupid and totally inaccessible these tools are when you actually feel like you might be drowning. Or suffocating. I guess those two sensations are pretty close.

Modern scales are fragile, too weak to bear the weight of words and those of recent vintage are tepid and irrelevant;

I like to think I contributed meaningful help to Daniel, but there was just so much more going against him than there was going for him. It is easy to point to the perceived failings of parents, but the truth is, we usually don’t know the circumstances surrounding families in need.

before we tumble off the crust and fall, i’ll tell her i drank sauvignon blanc on the airplane and it didn’t taste as bad as i remember when i was seven and dipping my pinky into the pool of her wine glass.

We tell these stories and we watch the countryside fade, we watch Volterra disappear behind the fog, and we see other towns, we watch cypress trees thread their way through the land in folded stitches, we look out and we can almost see the mountains past this haze. One day this will be my story.

As I shivered, I wondered what I was missing. How many years did I sleep too early for stars?

I imagine this Christmas Eve, the snow falling lightly, the Nativity displayed, a polka spinning on the turntable, the radio missing, taken by the communists that took over the farm. I envision they must have been using that radio to play their drunken tunes, singing with their harsh voices in a crowded bar. The family must have felt torn apart like the leftover corn husks shucked the week prior, limply sprawled across the kitchen table.

I’m tired of hearing that we don’t have diaspora or that my culture doesn’t value education and I’m tired of hearing that I am a pity admittance i am a product of my struggles and the fire that has burned ever since I was a kid 

My discomfort is probably clear to him, but as long as I don’t verbally resist, his mind can justify his behavior and allow him to look past all of the other signals that this is not what I want.

His kind words are still fresh in my mind as I return to work, but I can’t help but think of how I stepped around that man without shelter.

Deep down, I knew I was gay; I had known from several years of having crushes on boys, my obsession with Selena Gomez, and how excited I got when I got to wear make up in a school play in junior high. Despite the fact that I knew I was gay, I couldn’t be gay in a religious environment, toxic thoughts followed me wherever I went.

Like a symphony of mortar, the hole gets bigger the more they try to love.

I knew he was supposed to be in my life, but the memories of him are like faint shadows pouring through a frosted window, distorted and evanescent. I never see his face in clear detail. His voice is lost to me, and for some reason that hurts me more than anything else.

I got so worried if you even liked me that I forgot I didn’t like you. I didn’t like you at all.