"There is something in you too dark to name. Like swallowing bees. You are eleven going on twelve, and the whole world has shifted by halves. Your skinned knees are bloodied and wild, your skin greasy, hips sore. This, your mother tells you, is growing up. The whole world has been in on the ruse: your entire childhood you thought maybe you would never change." (Gravel Magazine, May 2016)
"We were hungry. We were tired. We hid our scratches under our sleeves, hoped they’d fade, and they didn’t. We blurred the boundary between the wounded and the wound itself. Our pain was not beautiful, and so what. Our scars were not symmetrical, and so what. This was our rallying cry: so what, so what, so what." (grlhood, December 2015)
"In Morgantown we had an apartment by the river, dark and full of soft water sounds, and we slept in every morning until eleven. We didn’t call our parents or remember to take out the trash. When we were still undergraduates, we stacked our dishes in the sink until we were forced to drink cereal from shot glasses, but we were older now, twenty-two, eager to take up the entire world in our thin arms. This was a test. This was a reckoning, an adventure." (The Rumpus, January 2015)
"1. Know that your happiness is temporary, no matter what. Your parents are farmers, or a woodcutter and his wife, or, God forbid, a king and a queen. Maybe your father gives you silly names and carries you around the room on his shoulders. Maybe your mother sings the way a river does. They are doomed, regardless, and it isn't your fault; you can't help being the heroine." (Bartleby Snopes, December 2014)
"...and she staggered forward into a different year, the fourth grade and her running away from someone holding a fistful of dirt for her to eat. Think back farther. Start over. The story you want to to tell is about a girl and stacks of newspaper, a scalp bared to the chill, the TV on and blaring. On the staticked screen, Carol says to Max, "Don't go. I'll eat you up, I love you so." (Three Rivers Review, print only, March 2013)
"Rapunzel Syndrome"
"We bring her orange soda and greasy pepperoni rolls soaking through their plates. We fix grits and ramps and sweet sorghum and watch her throw them into the woods. Her teeth are small and sharp. Don’t you know I’m haunted? she says." (Plain China, March 2012)
Chapbook published by the Poetry Society of New Hampshire, 2012