I attended AWP for the first time this year. In my memory now, it is a fluorescent lit blur of searching for faces I recognize, of endless flyers and stacks of books and a lanyard around my neck. And the men. I can’t stop thinking about the men.

It’s a known truth that shitty things tend to happen when life is on the upswing.

You just turned forty-two—at the height of the COVID19 pandemic, no less. After parting ways with your fiancé and pushing through a mammoth mental and physical breakdown, armed with hardheadedness and a sizzling double-dose of Moderna vaccine, you scratch and claw your way to a near-perfect existence. A slick dream job with stock photo coworkers on top of their game. Gamja hot dog and vegan donut picnics with your friends in Christie Park.

I haven’t bled in five months. Each time this happens I wonder, am I done? Was that it? Have I finally crossed the threshold into after, whatever that means?

I finally got pregnant after four rounds of insemination, three rounds of egg retrieval, and three rounds of embryo transfer. Some people who do IVF take pictures of all the needles it took to get them to baby.

At the age of fifteen, during the second semester of my sophomore year in high school, I cut off my hair—as close as I could to the roots—and started wearing my brother’s clothes. I wasn’t trying to be a boy; I was trying to un-girl myself.

We were all dressed in the checked, green gingham, but it was their bodies that moved expertly to the rhythm. They swayed their hips and shook their behinds, to Tony Matterhorn’s “Dutty Wine.” I watched from the sidelines, with a book in hand. All I could do was tap my feet. It was not in my muscle memory to jive to the steelpan beat. Our outer coating was the same—melanin rich, yet like mismatched puzzle pieces, I did not seem to fit.

I’m standing at the edge of a small, rocky precipice, deep in the heart of the Washington Cascades. Fear courses through me like a vise, squeezing so tight it takes my breath. Crusted with ice, the yawning gap stares up at me with cold contempt, challenging me to leap.

“Pain. Today I learned what that word really means...”

My first period is documented in my childhood journal when on July 3, 1998 I became a woman. I was just a month shy of turning fourteen and about to embark on my freshman year of high school.

I contemplated flinging the ring over the railing into the woods, but then I thought: no, then it will be down there. The diamond will be shining in the dirt like the highlight on an eye in a painting, watching me. It will bother me that it’s still close by.

I grab my keys and check my purse before heading out. It’s not a huge trip, but these days, it seems like a huge trip—a visit to the grocery store. For a little over a year now, this trip has required some extra preparation. The old usuals: cell phone—check...wallet—check...coupons—check. And the new usuals: mask—check...extra mask—check...hand sanitizer and wipes—check... gloves—check.

As soon as I started to pull off my sweater, stretching the thin black vee-neck up and over my head, it suddenly occurred to me. I needed to remove one or both of my masks. I’d dutifully fastened the blue paper surgical mask around my ears, covered by a black cotton one, while sitting in the parking lot.

My first love was a 2003 Subaru Outback. We first met at the car dealership that’s notorious for ripping people off, where I was blinded by newly gained teenage independence. Excited by my accomplishment of saving up three summers worth of paychecks, I was easily seduced by the Subaru's dependable reputation. I was in awe at the fact that my dad wasn’t entirely disapproving.

“You need to eat.” His eyes averted, my husband dropped a bag of potato chips in my lap and returned to his work call, pacing back and forth in the airport waiting area. I stared at the plain chips--I hate plain chips. I could feel them come again: fat, slippery tears sliding down my face. I tasted salt as I tried to bite them back. What was I doing in an airport in Arizona on a Monday afternoon? Crying in public? This wasn’t me.

Once, I had lunch with a really great poet. He said to me that most people think of anxiety the wrong way. They think that it is a rain cloud of what if, what if, what if, a cage of doubt and indecision which holds its sufferers in constant purgatory. They think of anxiety as a door flung wide open, flooding the mind with cumbersome uncertainty. In reality, though, there is nothing uncertain about anxiety. In fact, it is the most extreme form of certainty that can exist in the brain. Anxiety doesn’t ask “What if terrible things happen?” but instead says, “Terrible things are going to happen. What are you going to do about it?”