Welcome Beauty, Banish Fear.

All The Things That Girls Feel They Are Not When They Fear That If They Become, If They Are, They Will No Longer Be Loved By The Sisters Whose Hearts They Have Not Meant To Break. And Besides, If The Sisters Are Gone And Only The Beloved Remains With His Dense Curls And His Lips, How Safe Are You Then? You Have To Have Him Or You Will Die If The Sisters Are Gone With Their Listening Ears And Their Feet To Rub And Their Bodies To Dress And Their Shared Loneliness.

I Dreamed Of Being A Part Of The Stories—even Terrifying One, Even Horror Stories—because At Least The Girls In Stories Were Alive Before They Died.

I Wrote Poetry From The Time I Could Write. That Was The Only Way I Could Begin To Express Who I Was But The Poems Didn't Make Sense To My Teachers. They Didn't Rhyme. They Were About The Wind Sounds, The Planets' Motions, Never About Who I Was Or How I Felt. I Didn't Think I Felt Anything. I Was This Mind More Than A Body Or A Heart. My Mind Photographing The Stars, Hearing The Wind.

If Los Angeles Is A Woman Reclining Billboard Model With Collagen-puffed Lips And Silicone-inflated Breasts, A Woman In A Magenta Convertible With Heart-shaped Sunglasses And Cotton Candy Hair; If Los Angeles Is This Woman, Then The San Fernando Valley Is Her Teenybopper Sister. The Teenybopper Sister Snaps Bug Stretchy Pink Bubbles Over Her Tongue And Checks Her Lipgloss In The Rearview Mirror, . . . Teeny Plays The Radio Too Loud And Bites Her Nails, Wondering If The Glitter Polish Will Poison Her.

Dear Angel Juan, You Used To Guard My Sleep Like A Panther Biting Back My Pain With The Edge Of Your Teeth. You Carried Me Into The Dark Dream Jungle, Loping Past The Hungry Vines, Crossing The Shiny Fish-scale River. We Left My Tears Behind In A Chiming Silver Pool. We Left My Sorrow In The Muddy Hollows. When I Woke Up You Were Next To Me, Damp And Matted, Your Eyes Hazy, Trying To Remember The Way I Clung To You, How Far Down We Went. Was The Journey Too Far, Angel Juan? Did We Go Too Far?