The time she wet her pants in first grade, the time she imagined kids stepping on her in the playground as if she wasn’t there, the time she saw a deer strung up on wires by its front and back feet in her uncle’s back yard, the time she looked in the mirror and learned she could lie, the time she bled through her underwear, the time she got asked out as a joke, the time her face flushed fire when a boy asked her out for real, the time her boss called her parents for stealing makeup, the time her boss offered to let her come back to work, the time her mother caught her touching herself to porn, the time her friend told her it was wrong to steal, the time she stopped being friends with that girl, the time she stole money from her mother’s purse, the time she stole money from her stepmother’s purse, the time she bought expensive British import albums of her favorite band, the time she pretended to be drunk so she could kiss a boy, the time she threw up all over the kitchen floor, the time she stole credit card numbers from a friend of a friend so she could call her best friend in another state, the time she realized her feet were ugly, the time she had a seven-week-old fetus in her belly she didn’t want, the time she walked a mile to work in winter because she had no money for the Tube, the time she borrowed money, the time she borrowed money, the time she borrowed money, the time she got a job in a university library, the time she skipped the final exam because she was in bed with the trumpet player, the time she paid the money back, the time she finished her degree, the time she got another good job, the time she moved in with a man who drank too much, the time she moved up north and fell in love, real love, the time she went to a doctor about her curved toenails, the time she left the man and moved to another country, the time she fell in lust with a man and loved it, the time she wrote about it, the time she wrote and wrote and wrote, the time she moved back home, the time she wept at her father’s funeral, her brother’s funeral, her mother’s funeral, the time she fell in love again, for real, the time she held her baby on her chest, the time she carried her baby and the hand of her toddler in the park, the time she lent her friends money, the time she kissed her husband on a mountain in another country, the time she told her teenagers it will be all right, it will be all right, the time she coughed up blood, the time she held her husband’s hand in a stranger’s house, the time she said she was sorry, the time she said I love you all.
