Fool Me Once
The first time I had my breasts removed was hard. The second time, less so.
...more
Posts Tagged: surgery
Rumpus Exclusive: “The Beautiful Dead”
It was personal, as the detectives on my favorite shows always said.
...more
This Huge, Colossal Joy: A Conversation with Molly McCully Brown and Susannah Nevison
Molly McCully Brown and Susannah Nevison discuss their work.
...more
It’s a Beautiful (Toxic) Life
My defensiveness has never been what’s saved me.
...more
How We Write the Dead: A Conversation with Vikram Paralkar
Vikram Paralkar discusses his debut novel, NIGHT THEATER.
...more
The Bent Hourglass: Living in Crip Time
This is how to be sick, or hurt: give up on fast time.
...more
Voices on Addiction: All the Ways to Save Your Life
But we can make choices if we want to live. I believe that.
...more
The Tongue Goes
“In a nutshell,” he said, “they’re going to excise a dime-sized piece of your tongue and replace it with muscle and tendons from your left wrist.”
...more
The Night Faerie
We were all free-falling, and there was no one, nothing, to catch us.
...more
Hard to Kill
Now everything finally made sense. I had practically died and woken up, resurrected. That’s why everyone was looking at me funny. Like its cousin Death, Near-Death leaves a stench that makes people uncomfortable.
...more
White Noise
People never detail the confusion—the way days feel like years, and seconds like hours.
...more
Baking Lessons: Needing, Rising, and Letting Go
When I took those breaths, I also learned to say, “I am enough, I am enough, I am enough.”
...more
The Insanity of Eating
I didn’t usually consider how the binge felt. I just ate until I couldn’t eat anymore.
...more
Out of Order
In summertime, a small group of white, middle-aged, well-educated men were obsessed with my ass.
...moreDance, Write, Love
Before this semester in Italy, I had enjoyed writing for school, but now for the first time I was driven to write for myself. I began to need to write like I had needed to dance. Was I replacing one language with another, one way of communicating with another? Over at Catapult, Sari Wilson recalls […]
...more
Regarding the Boy
What happens to a place when it can no longer define itself by its history, when it tears everything down? What is the rust belt without the plants, the factories? Who is the boy without his sister?
...more
The Surgeon’s Stitches
“They were stupid questions because he already knew the answers to them,” Dad said. “He just hadn’t taken the time to think about them. And questions you haven’t thought out are stupid ones.”
...more
Women with Facial Scars
In flaws, there’s always a story. Mine is twofold.
...more
Wild Things
Statistics make us feel safe, but most of the time, they can’t predict what’s really going to happen in our life. We believe in them anyway, though.
...more
My Sister’s Legs
Because that’s how it is with sisters. You are them. You are not them. You are broken shards from the same pane of glass, each reflecting a different light.
...more
Off Record
Think of this as an origin story without an origin. This is as close as you can get.
...more
Paternalia
The truth is you didn’t want to disappear, but you were already disappearing. Your skin burned clean away, your body no longer recognizable without the flip chart at the foot of your hospital bed.
...more
About the Human Hymen (Disambiguation)
And because I had all of that ice to think about, it was difficult to understand what my gynecologist was saying about what he had just done inside of my body.
...more