I've always been partial to the image of liquor as lubrication, a layer of protection from all the sharp thoughts in your head.

I ached once, hard, like a period typed at the end of a sentence.

Sometimes I think I won't ever feel safe until I can count my last days on one hand.

To me, marriage is the ultimate mystery.

Sometimes I think illness sits inside every woman, waiting for the right moment to bloom. I have known so many sick women all my life. Women with chronic pain, with ever-gestating diseases. Women with conditions. Men, sure, they have bone snaps, they have backaches, they have a surgery or two, yank out a tonsil, insert a shiny plastic hip. Women get consumed.

She’s easy to like. I’ve never understood why that’s considered a compliment - that just anyone could like you.

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.