(Part One is here.)
There were others who left without dying, of course.
My best friend in junior high was a spunky girl named Carlye. We met in 7th grade, because we were forced to feign being musical for two years and we both chose choir over band. She played basketball, as did I, and the year [...]

I barely knew the first person who left me. She was beautiful, intelligent, strong. I knew that. She was also cancer-ridden. Lymphoma tore ravenously through her body until she was a thin and fragile casing of herself. The woman I had once quietly admired from across the room at every family gathering was dying. To [...]

The halls of my junior high were louder the day after my father died, full of audible whispers comprising a cacophony of sympathy I was not ready to accept, not ready to hear echoing off lockers I once looked forward to opening daily.
Strangers looked at me with tears in their eyes. Teachers spoke gently, pulled [...]

My body, this
body, that has
nothing to do
with who
I am.
-Sandra Cisneros, from Well, If You Insist
I don’t know when I started needing to use past tense whenever I talked about your finest moments, but I do know I use past tense now.
You were always strong, always athletic, always moving. You were adventurous and brave, definitely too [...]

“I’ve always liked the time before dawn because there’s no one around to remind me who I’m supposed to be, so it’s easier to remember who I am.” -from a Brian Andreas print my babycarrot sister gifted me last year.
————
I’m thinking tonight.
I’m wondering: why do we settle? For less of everything that was once promised. [...]

My father. My father was tall, like me. Dark-haired. Thin. He wore a mustache, well and often, and tanned easily. I loved his hands, always shaking slightly because of medication he took to balance the madness that sometimes danced in his head. I loved his smile, his laugh like bare feet hanging off a dock [...]

Received when I was still working in Washington, after our third round of interviews for an assistant position:
“Thank you for the interview. The facility there is very nice. I like the fact you have a small office. Makes it feel more like home, instead of lost.”
I completely understand. Our office does eerily resemble the set [...]

For years I forgot about me. Or, more specifically, about the me I was my first three years of college. Forgot about the spunky English nerd, the athlete, the overly naive freshman with picky eating habits. Forgot about the hard-wrought confidence I didn’t leave Oregon over four years ago without first burying with doubt, fear [...]

This Halloween my creativity and time are currently still hibernating in unopened boxes, and so, I bring you:
Costumes of yesteryear, a tour of sorts brought to you by The Ghost of Halloween Past:
One of my very first Halloweens, as Kerri Cottontail:

Saying “Boo” and meaning it since 1982. This year someone clearly couldn’t decide between “Ghost” [...]

While reorganizing and purging our garage of junk possessions long left for garbage last weekend, I found a box of old journals and notebooks in which I attempted to be artistic when I was still in elementary school and still figuring out that multi-colored pens aren’t a necessity. Especially not while doing Math.
All of it [...]