“I’m fine” is the mantra I will repeat, rubbed red raw into my skin, and for minutes, hours, days, it will even be true. and then, inevitably, the wave will come crashing down and I will be lost at sea and I never know if this is truly who I am or just a washed…

We fall in love with more ideas than people because ideas can fit inside our mind and when they break things we can tip our head to the side and let them leak out and brush it off and say: they weren’t that good anyway. Because if they were, they would have been meant for…

There are a lot of aspects of being a teen/young adult I genuinely do not understand. Maybe it was the way I was raised, maybe it’s just because sometimes I feel like I’m actually 35. This is probably exemplified in how I feel about parties. Whenever I go to a party, and there’s loud music,…

Let me tell the little girl inside of you it’s okay to lose a battle because she can still win the war but honestly, daughter of blood and honey, it’s remarkable that you’re fighting at all because they always say quiet, girl, quiet, and you never them lock up your words. In the language that…

Partially inspired by this piece We’re taught to crave that Friday night kinda love, disco ball, vodka mouth, kiss me then forget me, bleary eyed, only when the sun goes down, baby, kind of love. You won’t like my politics, I’ll think your bros are lame but that’s okay because our paths don’t lead to…

I can feel the echoes of the quiet stone my flesh had become and I was grateful to be impermeable to be quiet and still and safe Safe as houses. But houses aren’t really that safe, oftentimes they are where things get broken, our most precious secret dark things kept where the light does not…

I’ve been thinking a lot about identity. What shapes it, influences it, helps to uncover and clarify it. I’ve realized much of my identity has been shaped by something I’ve learned about since elementary school: colonialism. For American kids, colonialism brings forth images of Christopher Columbus, the American Revolution etc. But the colonialism that shaped me…

One day it will be a Tuesday night, you’ll be in the shower, reaching for your shampoo and you won’t recognize your life. The person you thought you would never stop loving has receded to the part of mind where pleasant, but hazy memories live, and maybe you’ll dust them off every so often, when…

They say you love things more intensely in your teenage years than at any point of your life. The amygdala, which controls emotions, develops. That, in tandem with raging hormones and the underdeveloped centers control logic and reason result in an emotional Molotov cocktail. The world looks down on this teenage infatuation, “it’s just a…