White dresses stained. Mascara smeared. The ones who know the inside of toilet bowls so well. Eat and purge. Smile and purge. Run and purge. Stare and purge. Yellow and greens smudged and sprayed. The girls in the white dresses are always dancing, dancing, dancing until they’re covered in red slop from their own wrists. Until they’re laying face up in a street they don’t remember. Bleach, bleach, bleach those white dresses. Cover, cover, cover. Hide, hide, hide. Pink lipstick and a teddy bear. A dollhouse and Mary Jane’s. “Darling, be a lady.”

Someone once asked me how I can make a space so homey, given such little resources. I have mastered unpacking and packing, deciding spaces are my home before I’ve even seen them; mastered the art of managing expectations, adjusting to them. I am a master molder. I feel more comfortable in unknown spaces than known. Relaxing in areas I’ve been before grows difficult for me over time, new spaces provide open doors for newness, a blank slate. It seems easier sometimes to just start completely over. To be in a place where no one knows your name or your story. Where everyone is different and everyone is the same. Where people are sassy until they care. Where they see you and love you right away. It restores all my hope in humanity, life, the pains, and choosing to live the way I live.

I’ve been told I’m a firecracker, a sass bomb and a voice, a balanced person that is almost always on the edge of exploding, yet doing it so peacefully, so much so that never would you notice from the outside. Until her smile, her voice, her thoughts, her story cracks the thick surface. I’ve always been one to think walls and cages were never humane, and so often we cage ourselves so people don’t do it for us, because we know they will. But we always forget that we alone hold the key.