Small Cat has white socks and a white mustache. She’s a matriarch with mocha markings and a heart of gold. She’s a hunter; once, she killed a gray squirrel big as she was. My foster-mother, my baby, she’s both. Why should something like that have to suffer so? I always try to give her a treat on her birthday. She’s partial to yogurt and she thanks me by sitting back on her haunches, lifting up those little stocking front feet, and bonking her head on my hand. Just make it one more year, old girl. We need you down here.

Sickle-cell or something

You’d lost weight and you admitted it

And you smoked something too

Right before you got there

I could tell because you were kind

You looked 17 years old

And you told me aliens were coming

They were going to make you a rockstar

Somebody who was friends with Johnny Depp

You said the meaning of your name

It was “God is the King”

You told me I was “Daughter of the King”

You told me to continue my music

You knew it was all going to end soon

But you didn’t know quite how

You told me to be ready

That the galaxies were swirling together and colliding

That you’d be looking for me up there soon

You got in and started up the car with the bad backfire

And that pale horse rode off into the night

My shaky hand gripped your hand in that ambulance. I squeezed that gloved hand like my life depended on it. Because Lord, it sure did. And I know you was only working and doing your job, being so good and patient with me. I probably looked like I seen a booger or a ghost, and was pale as such too. But you asked me my name and you told me, “Sweetheart, we’re gonna get you there soon.” I was dying, I knew I was, but wasn’t alone. You were loving me right then. I asked you your name, and it was Adam. The sweetest name I ever heard. That good man taking me somewhere safe, just ’cause it was his job. Now it’s quiet, and I know there’s nothing more for me to do but keep going towards that safe, warm place all them that love me was leading me.

I don’t know much about loving, but I do know this: there is something about the way of a man with a maid. They’re so different, but when they come together at night, it’s like they’re the same. And I don’t rightly know how, but it’s the sweetness of loving that’s at the beginning of every person that is born into a family, so it must be a mighty important thing.

Thank God whatever you tried didn’t work. For now, your cheek is warm against my neck. I won’t get up until I‘m sure you can sleep tonight. You say you don’t have any faith. Please let me have it for you. It’s not as heavy for me. Your darkness, to me, is weightless.

“I hear you,” I whisper through your sobs, rocking your trembling body like a baby in a cradle. “You will be okay, I promise.”

Because the feeling is returning to your fingertips, tracing my shoulder blades— something like desire, and now, desire looks a lot like hope.

When you said that should we never touch again

You would still come around

I was not so much surprised at this saying

But I stared amazed

At how much I believed

In you and in

This, and at how I had good reason to

As I leaned into you leaning

On the kitchen sink

Each little light on in your parents’ house

I recall nights the moonbeams hit

Your eyes just right

And made me want to seep into your bones

And I remember, too

Days you wiped my snot with your hand

And clutched me to your chest

I blubbered and scratched

And you cried I love you I love you Grace

You are an unmade bed

Tousled & still warm, and I

Fully intend to return to you

This summer, I worked in the kitchen at a Christian summer camp. I wore a long gingham apron and a smile, my hair tied back under a pink bandana. The other kitchen ladies said my company was delightful, and my help appreciated. My hands stayed in the warm, sudsy dishwater most of the time, though they were occasionally set to the task of mixing up a cobbler or boiling water for sweet tea. The ladies were eager to inquire about my upcoming wedding, and I was happy to chat flowers, bridesmaids, and guest lists. But oh, what if they had known?

Those smiles, that seemingly tireless youthful energy; they were not simply my good nature. They were learned, they were earned at a price, a terrible price. I survived trial by fire, and came out on the other side with a hardened countenance (read: cheesy dimpled grin). Maybe I made it through with all my bodily appendages still attached, and without the disfigurement one associates with tragic burn victims. That doesn’t mean I’m normal, or even healthy. Don’t misunderstand: I have the joy of the Lord. Partakers of that great salvation will learn, if they haven’t already, that such a joy is not always, but often, a happy cohabitant of the same space as a most doleful affliction.

Those sweet ladies, twice my age, couldn’t have known the demons I’d faced and the suffering I’d caused. Seeing the remains of my teenage acne, the freckles on my collarbone, and the pigtails down my back, they would consider me a fine babysitter for their little Susie or Amos. They wouldn’t give a second thought to trusting me to cut a watermelon with a chef’s knife. Ha! As luck would have it, that summer camp fell on a good week. They caught me on my very best behavior. Had I “slipped up,” like I so often did during my highschool years, warranting an overnight stay on the 2nd floor? “Pity about that poor, sick girl. One just knows the fragile thing’s going to slip away without a trace someday and leave behind a hungry baby and a shell of a husband. Pity her mother and father didn’t keep her shut up somewhere. Pity, pity, poor wretched girl.”

But what they saw of me wasn’t a sorry, random chance, I must remind myself. What the world sees of me is not a monster hidden under makeup, nor a cured patient: what they see is managed symptoms (read: 10,000 hours of practice, and a certain number of milligrams). I’m not a clown, nor a feelingless hull; I am a master, a veteran, a scrawny yet hardy yet broken (yet alive) prisoner of war.

My captor was declared dead a long time ago, but sometimes, I tighten around my own neck the chain whose end now hangs limply in his cold hands. “Torture me,” I scream through gritted teeth, rattling the chain, “Because I am worth nothing, save for getting the treatment I deserve.” A meek Lamb calls gently, but firmly from the doorway of that prison chamber: “Your worth was decided a long, long time ago, when I died on a tree, in that place called A Skull.” This I know, I know better than I know my own name, so I let the chain slip away to the floor. Then, the Lamb leads me out through narrow passages, so dark I sometimes lose sight of him, and of all things. I then hold tightly to his soft little tail.

“You are both a little young to be married,“ is all the kitchen ladies would tell me. But I could see in the twinkle of their eyes that they were as excited as I was.

“You’ll both figure it out,” they say. “You love each other, you love the Lord, and that’s what matters.” I silently plead them to realize their classic fairytale error. Even the prettiest bride can turn into a witch. Even the best intentions fail. Can’t a wizened eye tell that much?

But what has gotten me through 20 traumatic years? Was it anything but faith like a child’s? Let me tell you one thing: childlike faith is a strong faith.

Dakota works at the fried chicken place, and lives with her parents and ferrets. She keeps cheap liquor on her bookshelf for medicinal purposes only. She crochets. Her friends at the 24 hour gym all have a crush on her. Her arms zigzagged with scars, she claims she is too old for that business now. She goes to church on the Sundays she doesn’t work, hugging the old church ladies who dote on her. She laughs violently, falling out of her chair at one of her own jokes. Dakota only happens to mortals like us once in a strawberry moon.

Ants farm aphids,

If you did not know.

They herd and work aphids

As we do cattle,

An old man once told me

Over a cafeteria lunch.

Nodding, I tried to move away

Politely, or so I thought.

’Get away from me,

You old man,’ said I,

Though only to myself.

‘You old lousy, creepy farmer.’

I spoke none of this, still,

He wore an expression

Like a simple child,

A sad hound dog pup,

And I knew he could feel

My seething hatred of him.

’Bee Kind,’ said his hat.

How am I such a cruel young woman?

Men I fear, but bugs and beasts—

They are much scarier than

Poor Old Joe

Building LEGO cars

Feeding the fish

Outgrowing his clothes

Running cross country

Summer lifeguarding job

First real car

First real heartbreak

Out ’til 1 a.m.

Faster faster faster

Run my boy

The colleges call

Take your pick

We’ll be here.