I wandered around Sam Goody, more likely keeping track of my ABCs than taking inventory of the musical selections I passed row after row. It was December 1996, the beginning of another bleak winter in

to Mrs. Burrell

When Ms. Griffin was fired, my mother said 
it was because she was too gay, too flamboyant 
for our small charter school. I mourned her 
ombre dreadlocks and her laugh that swept

She didn’t look mad, but she was something. She was moving slow-fast like a cat, something I’d never witnessed, like I could feel how fast she wanted to go but wasn’t going.

Now, you book an appointment on a whim. But it’s not a whim. You’ve been thinking about this for a while.

Previously on...
Prologue

A tendril of smoke dissipated above us. She made an opening in her hands, revealing a little frog. Its throat pumped rapidly.

For Caite’s Sweet 16 we get a couple rooms at the Motel 6 on Cerrillos, not the one downtown with the outdoor pool, the one on the southside between the strip club and the mall, and everyone can pay

Hank sucked what was left of his cigarette back in one pull and flicked it into the alley.  The hot light of the ember cartwheeled through the air before disappearing into the snow.

I write this from a subterranean lair packed tight with things: books, CDs, LPs, cassettes, an old laptop or two, and a pile of baseball memorabilia. This is where I do my writing, on a desk among all

When my mother built me
again, she did not wait for sobs

to pass. She left clasps undone
then wept in her bedroom.

I tried to reach for the gown
but my fingers mumbled back hair

into metal

I don't notice anything when the television is on.  A bomb could go off in my kitchen and I wouldn't notice the wreckage until the next commercial break.

When I wasn’t on the road, I ate lunch at the diner just to watch Cathy polish the cutlery. 

the man who touches you also touches
the other women of the city, this special
man who you chose to be your first man
even after you’ve met so many men who
wanted to know you as a woman

When our baby arrives I am feeling a funny mix of elation and terror – what have we done?

I will shake your hand now. Later maybe we will have drinks. 

Sometimes we’d see a slip of moon hung in velvety sky, and we’d find ourselves crying for no good reason, or maybe every reason that we could think of. 

We know who has her period and who is still waiting. If a girl takes her backpack to the bathroom or sits pool-side in swim class, she has her period. So do the girls who—when they ask Can I go to the bathroom? and the teacher says, No—say But I really need to go.

Smart girls don’t tempt the devil. I was a bullseye, a bloody Rorschach blot, walking into the prison flaunting my muleta.