When Fat Best Friend comes on screen, I hold myself still and quiet. I look at the faces of girls around me—the bodies of girls around me. Their vanilla stick arms, the hollows of their throats. All negative space and shadow where I droop and swell.

I won't be defeated as I know I am right to want the same treatment as a man without debate &I find it absurd that when I utter one word about the issues they face, you say you don't see a trace

She was barely out of her teens when I was born into the role of constant companion – a companion that provided relief from a new and ever-present loneliness.

Ancestral roots shining above the sea resurfacing the memories so one day we could meet at least that’s what friendship means to me

The sound tunnels through my ears into some secret recess in my subconscious. Colors begin to seep out of this place. Yellow grows like a puddle of watercolor paint on the periphery of something in the distance, something to mentally move toward.

I kissed you at twenty-two. I’ll wait to do the same at fifty-two, if I have to.

Hiking through the wilderness saved me. It didn't cure me. It didn’t erase the dark thoughts that had been taunting me. Rather, it empowered me to honestly confront them and showed me that I had something to live for, that I was part of something bigger than myself.