“Legislators pass laws enabling families to control children and defund social services that support them, all in the name of protecting the wealthy, white, girl body. These policies, which are part of the theater of stranger danger discourse, endanger children by isolating them in their homes, where Lego fortresses can become wine cellars, tombs. JonBenét as a symbol becomes the sacrifice used to sustain this system. Her story becomes a dark illustration of the consumption of the violence and abuse inflicted on girls and women.”

“I don’t know when the bear thought came to me. I wish I had a distinct memory of when I first had the thought.”

“I wanted to have nightmares about monsters or mass shootings. It was too embarrassing — in the midst of global catastrophe — to be concerned with something as frivolous as high school.”

“I identified as a heterosexually-inclined bisexual when I started giving hand jobs for money, and I left more or less a lesbian. It wasn’t the only factor in that transformation, but boy was it a major one.”

For a split second, I thought about her racial calculations, not because I felt I needed to know, but because maybe, finally, someone might be like me. I knew our skin colors carried the weight of the same questions.

“I was guilty and heartbroken and I wasn’t ready to let go of her: my first kiss, my first time, my first girlfriend, my first love, my first everything and before that, my best friend.”

“…when my parents were yelling at each other and when my mom was slapping and screaming at me and when the kids at my school were making fun of me for being a cross-eyed dyke, I’d think about those kittens who were counting on me to keep them safe. I’d make it through another day.”

The entire story of our entire trip from California to Michigan and also all the bigger stories and the smaller ones, too.

“If you’d told 17-year-old-me that in 2015, I’d be standing in Target, picking out a Father’s Day card or crying while dancing with my Dad at my wedding, I would’ve laughed in your face.”

Was it a nightmare and you just thought you were waking up? It lasted for two hours, you could’ve been dreaming. But you were awake.

What happens when first love and first heartbreak features a cast of three.

A girl spends 19 days in rural Tennessee with her girlfriend and her family, takes a million pictures, then tells her whole life story in just under 4,000 words. What’s not to love?