For those who need a name, there's a gift basket of medical terms. All I know is cutting made me feel safe. It was proof. Thoughts and words, captured where I could see them and track them. The truth, stinging, on my skin, in a freakish shorthand. Tell me you're going to the doctor, and I'll want to cut worrisome on my arm. Say you've fallen in love and I buzz the outlines of tragic over my breast. I hadn't necessarily wanted to be cured.

There’s something disturbing about recalling a warm memory and feeling utterly cold.

Love makes you want to be a better man. But maybe love, real love, also gives you permission to just be the man you are.

It’s humbling, to become the very thing you once mocked.

What a generous thing that is, I realize, for a husband to try to make his wife laugh.

How do you keep safe when your whole day is as wide and empty as the sky?

I was raised feral, and I mostly stayed that way.