I’m not that interesting.

For the twelve years I’ve called myself a writer, this has been my refrain, along with is this the final draft or the final FINAL draft? and I got rejected yet again, time to call Dominos for cheesy bread.

I’m a cis white gal who grew up in a farm town, moved to the big city for college and basically never left. I hold down a corporate 9-to-5 job, which keeps my lights on when writing doesn’t. I have never been addicted to heroin. I am the opposite of “not like other girls”—I am other girls.

I would never offer a patient a poem about their leukemia. But sometimes I write them. 

Acute Leuk

His cells crumpled blue

tissue paper collisions

bring about the end

Up at 2, up at 3, up at 5. The dog, now a senior, has been most playful in the darkest hours of the night. Nipping at your hand like she is a puppy again. At 5:30, 5:45, 6, at 6:30 a long walk. The sunrise today looks like plastic. Shades of pink and purple like a 90s ToysRUs.

As an essayist, it’s my job to take experiences from real life and write about them. And oftentimes, these experiences do not take place in a vacuum; they occur with other people. And these people have their own version of events, which may differ slightly from mine. Alas, memory is fungible, reality beget by perception and emotion.