Ultimately, Zigzags was fueled by the nostalgia of all the places I’ve loved and left and missed. There’s a lot of flirting and parties and witty banter, but it’s very much about the necessary and heartbreaking recognition of when it’s time to move on.

When it comes to Buddhism and cultural appropriation, I still sometimes worry that I’m making a big deal out of nothing, that I’m angry for no good reason.

A middle-aged transmasculine butch person meets a trans-exclusionary radical feminist in the vast forest of Tumblr. What happens next is both predictable and unexpected.

Tell yourself that you’re not like one of those chain smokers, that you can stop whenever you want. Start smoking American Spirits, so it’s like, not even that bad for you because it’s natural, or organic, or something. You forget.

If you have ever met a mountain, you know that can’t nobody really own a mountain because they are too majestic, too strong, too beautiful to be tamed or owned. So I guess mountains are kinda like Black folk.

At my Catholic all-girls middle school, I liked to tell people I was Buddhist. It was my feeble attempt at preteen rebellion. I enjoyed interjecting, “Oh yeah? Well, I don’t believe Jesus was real because I’m Buddhist!”

When I teach Rachel how to tie me up and fist me, when I ask her to tell me what to do, when I teach her exactly how I want to submit, I give her permission to go on a journey with me and dive into an expanding world of pleasure.

It seems contradictory to say I learned how to view my body as my own by sharing it with strangers and friends, but it is a truth that I revel in. What I love and learn about these encounters are the parameters of my body, its strengths, and boundaries, what pleases it.

Even one-night-stands have a spirit to them, but I wasn’t willing to confront that until I stopped drinking. When I did, I was finally able to place my mind right within my body, to touch and be touched without fear. Having sober sex was a way for me to unravel the contempt I felt around my body and my sexuality.

Narratives of violence and abuse are so familiar in our history and culture that we hardly notice them. Corinne Manning shares what it took to notice and transform these narratives in their own fiction and their story collection, We Had No Rules.

I’m not coming out to you as a lesbian, umma, I’m coming out as your daughter. I’m tired of being a stranger to you and I’m tired of tripping over boxes in my living room because you’re incapable of just being vulnerable with me.

You have to know when to end things, and you have to follow through with it.

“Do you have something to tell us?” my mom joked. It was a joke, because of course I didn’t. “No,” I said with a laugh. And I thought I was telling the truth.

This cold-pressed, organic, lacto-fermented, natural, biodynamic, raw juice is the answer to all my problems, surely.

I wanted to be whole, pure, the person I was supposed to be. I wanted to be good enough that my sexuality wouldn’t matter.

For when wiping the slate completely clean isn’t really an option.

17 years of birthday diary entries.

I didn’t know then that Devon would become one of those women in my life who’s there for good, who I could not text for months and then suddenly dive right back in with. One of those friends who would show up, who would stay.

Listening to a song your crush recommends is a low-stakes window into their identity. It’s a way to get closer to someone, away from them. And isn’t that what a crush is all about? A solitary experience that has everything to do with the other person and at the same time nothing at all?

It’s like bullet journaling except not at all!