I have this halfway place, a rest stop on the road to sleep, where I can stay for hours. I don’t even need to close my eyes, just stay safe under the covers and breathe.
The fat, pumpkin-colored moon rose, turning bloodstains into shadows. All of the colors of shirts and jackets and uniforms paled to the same shade of gray.
Odysseus had twenty years to shed his battle skin. My grandfather left the battlefield in France and rode home in a ship that crawled across the ocean slowly so he could catch his breath. I get on a plane in hell and get off, hours later, at home.
IT happened. There is no avoiding it, no forgetting. No running away, or flying, or burying, or hiding. Andy Evans raped me in August when I was drunk and too young to know what was happening. It wasn’t my fault. He hurt me. It wasn’t my fault. And I’m not going to let it kill me. I can grow.
Nothing good ever happens at lunch. The cafeteria is a giant sound stage where they film daily segments of Teenage Humiliation Rituals. And it smells gross.
You can’t speak up for your right to be silent. That’s letting the bad guys win.
Precalculus was taught in dog whistle, a pitch too high to hear.
I sent a simple smiley face, because my phone did not have a smiley face that was wrapping her hands around her own throat and beating her head against a wall.
I am beginning to measure myself in strength, not pounds. Sometimes in smiles.
I cry to let everything out.
Write about the emotions you fear the most.
You have to know what you stand for, not just what you stand against.
The bathroom door swings open. Emma sees the blood painting my skin and the red rivers carved on my body. Emma sees the wet knife, silver and bone. The screams of my little sister shatter mirrors.
Censorship is the child of fear and the father of ignorance.
I failed eating, failed drinking, failed not cutting myself into shreds. Failed friendship. Failed sisterhood and daughterhood. Failed mirrors and scales and phone calls. Good thing I’m stable.
There is no magic cure, no making it all go away forever. There are only small steps upward; an easier day, an unexpected laugh, a mirror that doesn’t matter anymore.
In one aspect, yes, I believe in ghosts, but we create them. We haunt ourselves.
I am angry that I starved my brain and that I sat shivering in my bed at night instead of dancing or reading poetry or eating ice cream or kissing a boy...
Art without emotion its like chocolate cake without sugar. It makes you gag.
School libraries are the foundations of our culture – not luxuries.