Nonfiction

All the same, when it began to heal, I was stricken with an inexplicable sadness. I had come to identify with this scar. It felt like my history in flesh, fading away. 

I’ll make you love me, and then I win.

Drinking, unlike most things, is easy to predict. Here is what I know: Nine beers will put me on my ass.

The space between my left and right ear rings when nothing’s ringing. In dead silence, white noise. Static is my internal soundtrack.

Once upon a time, you had so much pigment in your skin, darkness pooling in your elbows, your knuckles, and especially your knees.

Without choking, I can now swallow and smile at the same time.

I am bare. Cleared of the years before me, prepped for the ones to come.

I stare at my skin with all its melanin, and feel like a fish on a hook, body thrashing. I tongue the wound and laugh with them.