Nonfiction

In this story, Cinderella takes the path less travelled. She will become a first-generation migrant in Canada, is born in Mumbai, and has she/her pronouns. 

I am standing on a mountain, listening to the whistles the foxtails make in the wind. I am buried in my own spring and
trinkets and body, always within something perpetually moving.

All re-naming is a form of re-definition; a receiving rather than a replacing.

“Do you remember when Nanu came to visit me in Wichita Falls?” The question carried across the unlit living room from the recliner end of a forest green sectional.  The venetian blinds behind her concealed the sunset over the lake.  She was indifferent to sunsets.  The blinds were opaque and tobacco-stained and probably hadn’t been […]

Certain things we just don’t want to know about until they’re real, to admit that a time comes when the only good parts left are all in the past, a time when we can no longer tread water, no longer put food to our own lips, no longer hobble to the bathroom on our own, no longer hold ourselves upright, no longer get into a car unassisted, no longer do any of the things that living requires without the need of someone else’s hands, without the need for someone to hold us up.

The main reason I didn’t publicly celebrate ten years on hormones was that I’d always felt ambivalent about meds.

I used to think my brother died of a brain tumor. That was the story that had been passed down to me when I began asking questions.

Olive trees stunt and twist and gnarl. It’s easy to dismiss them, to not even notice the rows and rows of olive orchards when driving around the countryside in places like Greece or Jordan or Turkey. They are unaesthetic, utilitarian. They are the ugly ducklings of trees.

But they are also my favorite story of survival, a story of flourishing.