This is a body / You can touch me / I am organic matter / moving constantly.

The big clock on town hall marks the hour, the bells inside ringing and ringing.

Most of the time I can avoid looking at my left breast — or whatever it’s called now — but when I do, I see the little red capillaries above and below the seven-inch scar snaking from my sternum up into my armpit.

On a day I am walking with my cane / in Starbucks / the lady behind me inquires, / from her wheelchair, / if I am recently disabled.

He calls you makhtesh, a word he tells you means the expanse of the universe.

It is the spring of 2007, and I have traded in my solitude for friendship.

I’ve been a plus-size beauty vlogger for the past two years, but I’ve been fat my whole life. Except for the day I was born.

“Go ahead and pee on the floor,” the radiology technician says.

Who gets to define safety and fear, security and terror? Who can we trust to tell us when, where, and how we are safe?

How does the body you’re in relate to your own sense of safety and other people’s ideas of danger? And why do we reject bodies in danger?

It breaks like this: We hold on tightly, and literally, because we’re young and we’re stupid and because we still want to have hope.

Seeing Dolores walk in, or someone who looked like a Dolores (he’d had more than a few since clocking out)

For six days after the operation, everything was blue.

I’m sitting with Larry at a Chipotle in midtown and his thousand-yard stare tells me I might dial the nihilism down a notch.

In seeking truth, the internet is the most powerful tool humanity has ever had.