Weeks After the Pulse Nightclub Massacre, I Hold Miguel’s Hand in Los Angeles
—and I like how it feels, his hand, a little thick. The way it spreads my fingers open to make space for itself. How we have similar heat and feel familiar in our touch. His soft skin. How in between our palms we hold a feeling. Words we haven’t yet said. —on a slow night...
No Intrusions
Every time my child gets dressed, I give him a choice between two different color shirts. One of them has a mermaid on it. Every time I help my child pick their clothes, I want to give them anything but blue even though blue was the first color word they could say, and all their...
Jewel
I. Tasha’s father sits in his recliner watching TV. Wonder Woman is his favorite, or at least, he pays special attention when actress Lynda Carter is on the screen whooping Nazi’s asses. Outfitted in star-studded panties and a gold foil bra, Lynda Carter is impossibly spangled compared to the women on our street. I’m scanning...
Partido
I am eight years old and lost in my daydreams outside Kmart as I weave in and out between the iron bars used to keep people from stealing shopping carts. Suddenly I become aware of my father’s gaze. I meet his eyes and find myself immobilized by the disgust in his scowl. He speaks—calmly, matter-of-factly:...
Visiting My Own Grave
I run my fingers down the two horizontal scars, still sore and red, on my chest, and I remember how when I had breasts they would slide to either side when I lay on my back, how they rested against my arms in their weighted softness, or when I was on my side they would...
Yentl
(October 4-8, 1993) The film is nearly ten years old by the time we watch it in World Cultures. My classmates: all girls, all bored. I try to feign boredom as a way to fit in, but it’s hard to hide what I’m feeling. It’s also hard to explain. Yentl wants to study, so she...
Things I Can’t Do Right After Painting My Nails (Though I Do Them Anyway)
1. Remove the corn husk from a pineapple tamal, layer by layer, as if unraveling a complex bandage. (The whole spongy mass flops off the plate and onto the table, despite delicate pinching and tugging.) 2. Prune a flowering crown of thorns I’ve revived from the dead. (When I try to reach a shriveled leaf...
A Reverse Chronology of the Body In Motion
26 years old. My husband and his friend David run together. They also take up indoor rock-climbing. They invite me, but I decline, remembering how awkward I feel in gym settings. An anxiety of taking up physical space lives in my body. They tell me that I would love rock climbing, how at its root...
The Chicken Whisperer
Back when our oldest son was a girl, we called him the Chicken Whisperer. He had this gift of stepping up to unruly roosters—the ones that chased his brother to the carpool in the morning, zeroing in like cruise missiles, the ones that made our grown house-sitters sob and sniff—and scooping them up like babies. Cannonball,...
Whenever Men Think I’m Smiling
I’m on the elevator alone for one floor before the man gets on. He stands in one corner, staring at his phone. I drink my coffee. At the next floor, two more men get on. They flank me, laughing and talking about some game somewhere. I pull my arms in at my sides, try to...
Dance Me to the End
Four o’clock on a Friday afternoon. My grandmother slumps against the arm of the sofa, eyes half-closed, sinking down, down, down. The tips of her fingers graze the floor, and she moves them about, grasping at some hidden thing she keeps secret. Today is no different. She has just turned ninety. The dementia, the vision...
Chronology of the Body
Five Years My hair is never brushed, and I always forget to sit with my legs crossed, ladylike, and for the longest time my only friend is Matthew Bickle. On the first day of school, he wears a red t-shirt, which sparks a heated debate amongst my classmates. “Matthew’s wearing a girl color!” Someone says,...
Our Bodies and Blood
There is blood on the pool deck. Coach points and we stare: blood, in the small grooves between tiles; blood, barreling towards the nearest drain like it’s being chased. “Oh no. No, no no. Did someone start—” his voice trails off. “Is someone on their—” We lift our butts and examine the tiles around our...
Women These Days
[Compiled and arranged by searching “woman + [verb]” (walking) in national news outlets over the past twelve months] An Ohio woman was shot dead while cooking Thanksgiving dinner; witnesses report that at the time of the shooting, she was standing at a kitchen table, preparing macaroni and cheese. The body of a North Carolina woman...
Salt River, Tide
One evening in the swamp-city where I used to live, at the mouth of a river opening into a salt ocean tide, in an apartment building known for jumpers, the woman upstairs tells me about her pain. We ride the elevator, laundry in our arms. The lift jutters as it passes each floor. Her back...
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