Shame is a treble hook that tells me that 1) I not only fail but am a failure, that 2) I not only damage people but I am damaged, and that 3) I not only lie but I am a lie.
Rarely is birth silent for anyone involved. Silence, instead, is a learned phenomena. Unlearning silence can become its own birth, as it seems in Kai Cheng Thom’s debut poetry collection…
Chasing intimacy can feel cheap—and yet intimacy we pay for can be meaningful. I find traditional therapy as awkward as sex, exposing my emotional self like I expose my body.
As truth becomes more elusive, as fact blends with fiction, we ought to take notice of how we categorize people, as categorization seems to be married to suppression, to disenfranchisement.
Poverty may have been beloved of St. Francis, but not so much by the rest of us. Nobody likes to look at advanced poverty, toothless and drooling, clutching the hands…
Was it a dream? A nightmare? I felt like I’d been sold a lie. There was no husband or caring partner, no safe home or solid income. Just me, pregnant and alone, in an abortion clinic with my rapist.