After Telling The Hard Facts To Anyone

The Living Deserve Attention, Too

I Was Trying To Prove To Them And To Myself That I Was Still Who I Had Always Been. I Was Beautiful, If Fat. I Was Smart, If Loud. I Was Good, If Ruined.

You Could Not Be Filled With Hate And Be Beautiful. Like Any Other Girl, I Wanted To Be Beautiful. But I Was Filled With Hate.

Inside The Snow Globe On My Father's Desk, There Was A Penguin Wearing A Red-and-white-striped Scarf. When I Was Little My Father Would Pull Me Into His Lap And Reach For The Snow Globe. He Would Turn It Over, Letting All The Snow Collect On The Top, Then Quickly Invert It. The Two Of Us Watched The Snow Fall Gently Around The Penguin. The Penguin Was Alone In There, I Thought, And I Worried For Him. When I Told My Father This, He Said, "don't Worry, Susie; He Has A Nice Life. He's Trapped In A Perfect World.

No One On The Street Thought Anything Of The Downtown Girl Dressed In Black Who Had Paused In The Middle Of Midtown Foot Traffic. In Her Art Student Camouflage She Could Walk The Entire Length Of Manhattan And, If Not Blend In, Be Classified And Therefore Ignored.