Category: Reflections

I’ll start at the end. The day after I chaperoned my school’s graduating seniors to Cedar Point, a junior asked me how it was. I shrugged. “It was fine,” I deadpanned. “Don’t you ever have any fun?” the student asked. And here’s the thing: I had had fun. It was fun. I just…. Okay, so….

The first full day that I owned a driver’s license with an X for the gender and no part of my birth name on it, I went to see a band named X with a lead singer named John Doe with a ticket I had not purchased. From the time I parked to the time…

I don’t know what to wear today. Sometimes I think about wearing a dress, long and flowing and covered with flowers. Wisterias, perhaps, to match my nails. Or lavender, or purple hyacinths. But then a voice inside says: “What a joke. You’re a joke. You don’t have the body for a dress like that. You’re…

My father insisted: “I’m not fat, I’m big-boned.” And though his Buddha belly strained at his clothing, it was true that his frame took up the whole of the room. He was not just six foot four. His rectangle was a door frame, and his voice was a thundercloud moving through the air. I do…

Last night I had a dream. In the relevant part of the dream, I was walking along a river where I was supposed to meet my father. My older brother had arranged for us to ride down the river in a canoe carved from a single tree trunk by an indigenous elder. Every year, they…

The most prestigious writing award I ever won was for a story I wrote in high school called “Pity the Unicorns.” Scholastic gave me an “Honorable Mention” and included it in their annual writing journal. My school sent the announcement to my brother instead of to me. He passed it along, making sure to make…

1 The five and dime where my parents bought my first typewriter is now a candy store that shares its name with a comic book series about the apocalypse, and that makes sense because I feel like I am a hybrid, half-human, half-alien, looking to be made whole, and I feel like it was there—in…

Today instead of “male-presenting” I referred to “male-perceived”. It was a moment of exhaustion and missing the intended word, or so I thought until I reflected later and realized that this is why I’m not fond of “male-presenting”. Because I don’t “present” as a man. I don’t wake up in the morning and make choices…

Here is a dream. I had noticed that we were missing one of the steps going to the basement, but we’d learned to just hop over the gap. I finally decided to fix the stair. I hopped down into the gap, picking up the step that had fallen down underneath the stairway. I looked at…