We skittered all over the woods, doubling over in hysterics when we saw anyone. Their bodies appeared wavy and distorted, weird sounds escaped from their too big mouths. We’d run from them screaming in glee. We must’ve looked nuts.

After my mother’s death, I was left with a sense of emptiness. I found consolation in the family treasure trove of pictures. I loved looking at the images of my parents at the beginning of their marriage, when they were younger than I had ever known them, and their life together was a future promise.

I have yet to understand the pain within me that is so latent and so amorphous. It does not scream like the pain that caused Toews’s family members to take to the tracks. It does not lead me to the pill bottles of my own that contain more than enough chemicals to kill me, but they sit on my kitchen table.

It is ironic how the closer to death we get, / the more we appreciate the life we have.

I’d always return to the mirror / to paint inside the frame /with brushes I did not own.

I surrendered many times / and painted lullabies / across the walls / to lure myself into slumber

My volume is turned down, but the / critical voices inside I still hear, My volume is real low, some days I can hardly leave my bed.

tell her I still double knot my shoelaces for a hike. / I would ask if she has found Dad / and how long it took,

We perceive the world spatially and often recall things based on their location. The reason why you remember that the passage you’re looking for is on the bottom left-hand corner of a page is the same reason why you always know to turn right at the red house on the corner.

She was not that person, but she was trying. Smiles and laughter came more easily to her, softening her hard lines and creating fine ones around her eyes.

Your roommate thinks it’s funny to say, “I brought the Mexican!” when you guys arrive. You’ll laugh and roll your eyes, tell yourself it isn’t a big deal. Then they’ll start making “Build the Wall” cracks when you beat them at cards.

I see you in our living room, lying still on the couch. My voice ringing out through the silence, my guitar vibrating in my shaking hands as I sing about amazing grace, tears rolling down my cheeks. 

there is no joy of newness in ashes.
no beauty in watching the world burn.

But you and I, we wrote ourselves into a romcom script / And in the climax of the film / The scene got clipped.

mother tells me
it’s a Navajo tradition
hair is memory
hair is nizhóní

My dad says, Nature Always Wins.
And he only says this when there’s silence

She remembers the sound of tiny, rushing feet,
Of laughter in the halls
Every tear shed, every prayer before bed

The people we ate dinner with were not always lost. In fact, some of them were the most grounded people I’ve ever met, ones who knew exactly what it was that led them to our table, and leaving, where they were meant to go.

It would never be the same, and haranguing me about dystopian clichés in the way that used to lead to a deeper shared intimacy fell flat. We no longer spoke the same language, and we realized it in a way that hurt and healed at the same time.

One day she’ll see her tortoise, and travel the world, and swim with sea creatures, and draw them all, but she doesn’t need me to wish that for her.