Ode to My Canvas Catsicle Bag with Rainbow Handles

Each sentence goes through the alphabet in order. It’s allowed to skip one letter and one letter has to be one word. Almost nothing could have prepared us for the stench. Because we are in a third-tier city in Western China, the western toilet is not commonplace, and the only…

The holy dwells in the fabrics of India, in a woman’s bright sari, rich in colors with gold around the edges. It dwells in her scarlet bindi. In the dark eyes of the mothers and their children. In the moped upon which a family of five can travel. In the…

I am writing and expressing and telling the truth to people for the first time. Therapists and doctors, they don’t get it either. This is my favorite: health professionals say, “It’s normal, many antidepressants make patients suicidal.” No, it is not normal. It is hell. And this: Oh are you…

I am paranoid. Humankind will change forever. The environment might get better but that is because not enough people are working. The economy is wrecked. Old men in Washington DC want us to die, want poor people and brown people and everyone they hate to die. I am afraid, not…

If they chopped open my body, they would find a dozen cats, a few dogs, rabbits, gerbils, and hamsters. They would also find hurt pride from horse bites and sore bottoms from being thrown, as well as pretty manes and eyes. They would find crayons and pictures, clay pots glazed…

When I was ten, I began to travel by myself. I was independent and rarely got homesick. I very much enjoyed taking the Greyhound Bus from…