Secrets buried beneath sandy eyelids.

I remember soft light through a window—it looked like the purple-yellow of an insect’s wing. It was a mysterious, murky light. I remember soft feet, I remember hiding up high in a tree,  waking up feeling heavy with the dampness of not-quite-dawn and the gravity of some lost fragment of thought. Secrets, buried beneath sandy eyelids. Cold toes on the wooden ladder. A split second fear before flipping on the bathroom light switch, perhaps of seeing something unexpected in my own pale face, reflected in the oval bathroom mirror.

Continuously coping with return.

I think I have finally identified that gnawing anxiety between my ribs, the intermittent weight hanging over me as an existential dread resulting from the mismatches in my experiences, in the realities that I feel attached to or embedded in; an expanding sorrow as the past and my connections to it drift away, the sense of relationships dissolving into their geographic impossibilities.

A letter to Macy.

To Macy—

You were born during a strange and fleeting heat wave in October. The night before your birth, miles away, I dreamed of your mother, round and bursting with life. You were born after a tumultuous September, and we looked to you as a green promise, a warm wind of hopefulness and light.

You were born into a family that will love you not sweetly, but fiercely. In many ways, we are more like a clan, a tribe, than a family. We brandish our last name like a flag and we will hold you up and sing your praises. We are boisterous people, kind, intuitive people, deeply connected with the other world, with the family members who are no longer here, but who guided you into your mother's arms. They are all around us, and you will feel them- when you are afraid, when you need strength, when you feel alone.

If I could tell you anything, offer you some small piece of advice, it would be this: life is full of all the lessons you need. Be aware of what is being shown to you, listen, and hold your mistakes in your hands like precious stones before tossing them aside and moving on. They are your most valuable possessions, but they weigh you down if you dwell on them.

Your life is a unique experience and no matter how much a person knows, only you are the expert in your own existence. Be receptive to the knowledge of others, but know that you are free to adapt what you learn to your own idea of self, your own path. The singularity of your existence is amazing- you are unlike any creature to ever walk the Earth. Embrace this as an opportunity to be unapologetically and wholly yourself, whoever that becomes.

No matter what, you are loved.

—Tressa

Fragments of dreams and teeth.

You were standing beneath a lamp, bathed in yellow light, packing cold earth into a mason jar, someone told me in a dream.

In a tent, my head is swimming, and some big person is pushing his body onto me. I call him filthy. I call him terrible names and cry.

There's something in my mouth. I spit our four cracked teeth and realize the rest are almost all gone already. What remains are sharp shards, exposed nerves. I feel responsible, guilty, almost, as if I've allowed all this decay to form, and am only now waking up to my ruined mouth.