There are two hundred steps on the staircase in the Valea Morelor Park, Kishinev, Moldova. I’m ten years old. It’s 1986, and I walk with my mom, dad, and younger sister at the top of the staircase. The staircase looks to me as long as life.  You get down the stairs, and you end up at the lake. I  love to come here, and it feels so fancy and festive. My parents are in their forties, and I feel happy to be together. Mom and Dad dressed up in their nice clothes. They dress us up in lovely...

I fought tooth and nail to get my ex convicted. Strike that. Reverse. First nail then tooth. I had chewed my nails raw between the months of court hearings. Like everything else bureaucratic in Mexico, it was a tedious, nonsensical uphill battle. The final judgment? A measly warning and a barely-there restraining order—no distance specified. That’s when I noticed how hard I had been clenching my jaw and the  awful pain in my lower right molar. It would come and go, not unlike the stress of...

I (un)knowingly eat them for lunch: multigrain crackers, goat cheese, side of fresh ripened figs– Their wings, the dark slits of their eyes. What does it mean to pretend to not know what you are knowingly doing? To ignore fact for fiction, to (un)know it was already the end the first time he kept going after you were (un)sure you told him to stop. To pretend he must not have heard you easier than (un) knowing he did but just didn’t care. To slip into that white space beyond the body, flip the...