Before you hurt me, I had so much beauty. Before I knew any better, everything tasted sweet. I was a child, after all, even bitter vegetables are fun to push around a plate.

America. We. Love. You. So. Much. / land of the free and home of the grave / Where an issue of Kleenex Monthly / and flowers / are delivered every / National Disability Independence Day / by motorcade / in stacked cartons / labelled only “THE LONELY”

Many people have an invisible disability. In the United States, the number ranges from one in two, to 26 million. We don’t use wheelchairs. We are not always housebound. We look perfectly fine. Talking with friends who have the same diagnosis, I learned that not only do symptoms come and go, they are different for everyone. No wonder the physicians are baffled.

your mudtropic soul still drawn / just as the boy of you imagined / never to resist not under glaring sun nor beneath / the halo of the moon / rolling with that sister down an embankment / into a ditchful of daylilies

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.