“I’d arrived to campus that first time wind-tattered, make-up smeared by an hour’s worth of sweat. My wrist ached from nursing the clutch around curves, hazard-level winds pushing me to the edge…”

“He could see the highway in my eyes, the black-tar sinking like tidepools in the corners. I sagged into the couch and sighed into the steam…”

“I would walk, trash bags twisted onto my ankles to shield against snow melt, until I could rest against the bark, flick through songs, and watch as my breath drifted to the shivering leaves…”

“I heard it first before I saw it: a haphazard tapping, urgent as a whisper, against the window…”

“No one told me I was always meant to lose her. To this day, I wonder why they did it…”

“When those eyes flash from yards away, a sickly yellow, there is no time to breathe, to think…”

“I shrank my life to a box so often it became normal. So, when I saw how the University of North Dakota hid entire boxes of artifacts, a small, strange part of me no longer felt alone…”

“When you meet the other version of yourself standing across from you someday, you will know, immediately, all the ways in which you will tutor her in a sudden crash-course.”

“How do you explain that after so much time spent wanting, you’ve numbed yourself against constant rejection? That my indigeneity should’ve never been dangled like a carrot on a stick?”

“If you’re surrounded by fire, do you know where to go?”