Seeing Vanity
I asked the stylist to buzz cut my hair from the roots. He patiently made more than ten braids, using rubber bands at both ends to keep the hair from unraveling. He would donate them to be made into a wig for cancer patients. My dark brown hair reached down …
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Down the Middle of the World
Father told my sister and me to pray to the volcano: Please allow our visit and let us enjoy the day in the paramo. But I knew my cousins in the car in front weren’t doing it, so I closed my eyes and just pretended. We never made it to …
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Hyacinth Girl
I used to hide under the table when my father returned home from business trips. It was something I learned relatively late in childhood—if seven years old can be considered late. Before, the strategy had been simple: if he found me during one of his rages, I made myself as …
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Trash Brownie
In my black and white dotted lunchbox, under used napkins and plastic spoons, sat 407 calories, wrapped in plastic. The highlight of my day. I had waited two days for the opportunity to lie on my bed, expectations and standards falling off my shoulders like crumbs. Those 407 calories were …
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What I Remember
[Content Warning: sexual violence] I can’t name the man who took my virginity, but I remember that he mentioned liking Stumptown Coffee. Of the thirty-two men I’ve slept with, I recall the first names of twelve off the top of my head. From my Notes app, I can retrieve some …
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Lost Breath
Her legs dangle over the edge of the table, her back curled into a C. The anesthesiologist plunges the catheter into her spine, numbing her lower extremities and silencing contractions turbulent as white caps in a storm. Pinned to the operating table, she can’t see past the blue sterile shield …
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For Nana, a Sunrise
In the throes of a global pandemic, four childhood friends float in a pool, discussing ways to die: the cancers that run in our families, from breast to blood; heart disease; a freak accident; the sun, heat stroke or melanoma. “We are, however, less susceptible to violence with our light …
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Come, Pain
I have no cause to grieve the loss of my uterus. I have an abundance of children, all grown, grounded, flourishing. So why was it so hard to see it go, that vessel that delivered life through me and sent four new beings down the gangplank with a little nudge? …
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Healthy Skepticism
I sometimes feel as though I am not there. No—let me rephrase. I sometimes feel as though I am other people, and the saggy sack of bones I see in the mirror is a new, grotesque monster that runs about convincing people it is me. Its brown eyes roll about their strange …
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First Fall
1. Ring around the rosie, pockets full of posies, ashes, ashes. The game is a circle that moves on eight legs. We are a spider of four hairless girls. Our small hands are squeezed inside other small hands and more small hands; groping for a hold. We all fall down. …
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