Before the bargaining began there was summer. Cicadas sawing the air open, the thick animal heat of afternoon, bare feet blackened with dirt. The world was small and enormous at the same time. Kitchen counters were mountains. Trees were kingdoms. The sky went on forever. We hurled our little bodies into swimming pools that smelled like chlorine and sun. Our hair tangled itself wild around our heads. We played house. Played doctor. Serious games. Not serious at all. We did not

You will have to find me where life is slow and quiet, where I am tucked away — wrapped in the splendor and beauty of simplicity and mountains. You will have to find me when I am satisfied with all of it, when nothing is missing, when the day closes softly and I do not reach for more. You will have to find me where the heart flickers — opening, closing — and the flickering is no longer a problem, only a rhythm I have learned to find the music in. You will have to find me wand

They have taken me everywhere. They are heavy with stories and never refuse the weight. They walked me homeless through San Francisco— up hills that asked for breath, down streets slick with fog and hunger, step after step saying, keep going, even when nowhere answered. They crossed the San Fernando Valley in heat that peeled the day open, past warehouses breathing sex through cracked doors— rubber, sweat, bass thumping through metal— my feet learning the difference between d

I named myself Zero to make space for everything to exist in its time. I have always felt like no-thing and everything all at once. Now my body is free to express this in whatever way it wants. It moves. It sways. It jumps. It shakes. It has had its breasts and nipples removed. It is covered in art, draped in so many lovely things, peppered with perfume, slathered in oils. It doesn’t get touched as much as it used to when I was pretending to be a girl. It grieves that. A

One of the most challenging aspects of this lifetime has been operating at my actual level of understanding rather than holding myself in an arrested state for the sake of legibility. Practically, it has meant not struggling against the rearranging of my relational constellations, embracing solitude, and bracing myself against the impact of other people’s fear of the unfamiliar and the groundless. There’s a strange juxtaposition occurring: the more I feel myself in relations

These letters were written between two Dharma friends — trans Zen practitioners and Dharma siblings — both living in the wake of botched surgeries, each grappling in their own way with the intersections of embodiment, grief, and desire. What follows is my side of that conversation. Letter One: The Wound Opens Hey — Following up from our conversation. Thank you for taking the time to speak with me. Our conversation felt resonant, and also it emotionally filleted me. After we s

It occurred to me today—after trying rapé for the first time and finding, much like with other substances, that it had little noticeable effect on me—that maybe there isn’t one single baseline of consciousness from which we all depart. Each of us lives inside a different “ordinary.” What feels transcendent to one person might feel like Tuesday afternoon to another. I have a client who has no particular interest in eliciting altered states of consciousness, and doesn’t orient

I stood in Frida’s rooms and cried for the bed that held her broken spine, the animals at her feet, the father who stayed near, the house...

Author’s Note:This poem explores intimacy and sexuality in a raw and explicit way. Please only read further if you feel comfortable engaging with erotic content.

You’re like a dolphin rushing to the surface, leaping into air and light, then diving all the way down, holding your breath, sinking into...

Author’s Note: This poem explores intimacy and sexuality in a raw and explicit way. Please only read further if you feel comfortable...

I’m feeling a strange, grief— the sadness of a lifetime of injury, senseless injury. Memories of carnage drift through the marrow. I feel...

This body is non-dual. Non-dual and integrated. So much of its becoming has been spontaneous, organic. I was presented with the...

I saw you— you, the boy-child buried beneath teeth and terror. I saw your skin before it was armored. I saw your eyes before they turned...

Matter is the hush of spirit made dense, slowed enough to be seen. A whisper that thickened until it wore skin. It is breath clotting...

This morning, I went on a hike with someone I’d just met. There had been a thread of kinship at first—we’d both left home, moved our...

Let them be, he said— and it rang through me as revelation. Let them be. Not the muttering of defeat, not resignation. But presence. A...

We don't always realize we're doing it. We sit. We breathe. We watch. And somewhere along the way, the practice that once opened us...

There was a time your generosity tried to secure safety— love as offering, yes as appeasement, light leaking from longing into...

Blood-Memory This warmth— this sensual rising from within— it is not new. It is ancestral . It is blood-memory . It is the flame in the...