“Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature – the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.” ― Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

Summer, 2000

On the precipice of twilight, the cloaked hush of a summer’s night coats the Chicagoland suburb in an unusual silence. No cars roam the streets. Historic farmhouses and their more modern counterparts stand still in shades of blue and gray, shuttered and quiet. An occasional firefly flashes its last call, aching to be seen in the early hours of a new day. Lying out on the damp grass in the front yard, my friend Emma and I search the sky with excitement. We are eight, seeking a mythology the natural world has made manifest in our imaginations — fairies. 

Our eyes are wide open. The world is beautiful, and we know it is meant for the presence of extraordinary things. 

My days that summer were spent exploring fantastical worlds hidden from the unbelieving eyes of human beings. Forest gnomes sought shelter in the hollows of trees, burrowing into the sturdy heartwood of the oldest, wisest oaks. Water fairies danced across creeks’ rapids and lamb’s ear — with its soft, wooly white spikes — formed their natural bedding. In the shade of covered brush, Emma and I spent days building “fairy homes” — rudimentary structures of twigs and leaves, with flowers and berries as meals, and water-filled acorn caps as drinks. We believed these acts of goodwill would convince the fairies of our benevolence, making us worthy recipients of their friendship. There was no dissuading us of their existence. The natural world had captivated us into a devoted conviction. 

——

Heartwood is the supporting pillar of a tree. Also known as duramen, it is composed of the innermost layers of wood that die off as a tree grows and ages. It is said to be as hard as steel and immune to decay as long as the tree lives. It is the central being of the tree — its soul, perhaps — endowing the tree with the ability to withstand nature’s inevitable barrages. 

Although we share only 50% of our DNA with trees, humans are not so different in this way — the layers of our life also form the pillars of our being. The formative years of childhood, externally shed as we enter adolescence and adulthood, remain etched into our minds and hearts. They inform our choices and responses, assure us of who we are, remind us of where we’ve come from. Born at the start of the prosperous ‘90s, I came into childhood with a delicious blend of contradictions — sensitive, independent, stubborn, sarcastic, compassionate — and stumbled into life with a defiant curiosity.

It was my deeply held conviction that magic and magical beings were real that brought me to lie in the grass with Emma on that cool summer morning, when twilight turned to dawn and colors painted the sky cerulean and blushing pink. Mourning doves began their symphonic cooing as harbingers of the coming day. A passing Metra train rattled the earth beneath us as I held Emma’s hand. I turned to her with a grin, “Giants!”

Every natural occurrence — the departing fireflies, the mourning doves, the wind passing through the leaves of the catalpa we lay beneath — assured us of a world that existed beyond our purview.

It was a world that beckoned to us with open arms.

——

In many ways, my childhood was quintessentially idyllic. We were a family of six in the affluent Chicago suburb of Glen Ellyn, and my summers were filled with camping trips, bike rides along the prairie path, and days spent at the local pool. Friday nights included the occasional dance party, where I stood on my dad’s feet to sway in circles to our favorite Joni Mitchell songs. On mornings when I left for camp — where I learned to churn butter and collect eggs on an 1800s era farm, or waded through local rivers in knee-high boots to discover tadpoles and turtles — my mom placed a gentle kiss on the center of my palm, curling my fingers over the spot with her own to seal it in. It was her attempt to protect me from the cruelties of the world, an act of love meant to last a lifetime. 

When night fell and all the neighborhood children returned to their homes, I would sit on the front porch swing watching as fireflies flickered into sight, bringing the light of the stars down from galaxies to dwell in my own front yard. The brilliance of these creatures was inexplicable and divine. Their bioluminescence held in my cupped hand was proof of miracles — the light of stars found flickering on earth. 

I also learned of fear and death, of nature’s darkness. 

One hot afternoon in June, a rabid coyote walked down the streets of our neighborhood, forcing all the children indoors. Its lopsided gait and foaming mouth struck me as monstrous, but I cried when my mom revealed its destined fate: death. 

When a mother wood duck died after flying into a well-cleaned apartment window, the brood of ducklings she left behind in a local pond quickly died off. I imagined that it was a disappearance fueled by grief, but my neighbor explained it was likely starvation and predation.   

There were times the sky turned a murky green, when wind snatched branches from the trunks of trees and the threat of tornadoes forced us to cower in the basement with the radio on and flashlights in hand. My dad would stand with me on the front porch as the storms rolled in, moments before the sirens started. Together we marveled at the omnipotent force of nature. 

And then the West Nile virus struck, silencing for decades the ubiquitous crows that had once cawed on the garbage cans outside my bedroom window every Monday morning. Their corpses littered the streets and backyards, eyes unblinking and wings bent askew from an unexpected death. We were warned to stay far away from their bodies.

Beauty and decay, life and death, horror and majesty, all existed side by side.

——

There is an inherent contradiction in heartwood. It is, scientifically speaking, dead wood,  and yet the living tree cannot survive without it. It is a hardened, xylem-cell chamber of memories that serves as a testament to the passage of time. It is death as the foundation for life still to occur. 

What has come to pass forms the heart of the present. 

Autumn, 2011

In boots I move from one gneiss boulder to the next, skipping across shiny surfaces of gray scattered across the flowing waters of Rock Creek in Northwest Washington, D.C. The boulders are metamorphic, transformed over time by extreme external pressures. By happenstance or by design, they form a meandering bridge across the icy water. 

My throat is raw from the cold. 

Late October winds whip the trees around me and force the few remaining leaves to fall. They land, silently. The white noise of wind and creek muffles my thoughts as I focus on the sensations of cold air and spritzing water. I will myself to feel myself.

 In my searching, I find emptiness.

——

I was 18 years old the night that I was raped. 

I had known for years that men would try to take from me things I did not want to give. Adolescence had brought abscission, a discordant break in my world that transformed it from a benevolent arena to a predatory chase. Boys in high school who grabbed my breasts in the dark passages of haunted houses or the backseats of moving cars; hands that slipped up my dress to press between my legs on the dance floor. There were the words — spoken and texted — that laid claim to my body, demanding revelations and offering the seduction of an illicit encounter. Adolescence heralded a reality that fractured the world I had existed in before. My body became the measure of my worth and I realized, for the first time, that I was viewed as an object to be used.

The night I was raped remains blurred by the mask of intoxication, and remembering the details is like putting together a 1,000 piece puzzle with essential pieces missing. I was at an off-campus fraternity party at American University. Alcohol coursed through my body and marijuana clouded my mind. The “no’s” I uttered were ignored in thrusts. A dark ceiling and purple sheets provided no refuge. 

When he was finished, I rolled off the bed. Landing on my hands and knees, I scrambled to find my clothes in the dark. 

——

As a season, autumn has always pulled me between the beauty and necessity of change, and the pain of letting go. Each year the arabesques of vermillion leaves dancing between the pirouettes of their golden counterparts captivates my mind, stunning me with their beauty. Their dance signals the end of a summer spent absorbed in life, when elements and light transform into glucose, and starchy leaf lobes feed leafrollers and caterpillars, all the while providing shelter for nesting sparrows and squirrels. Succumbing to the push of autumn’s southern winds, deciduous leaves fall upon the earth to join other littered remnants of life, dead matter decomposing into the biomass to feed the roots of surrounding trees that shiver with apprehension.

Unlike autumn, there is no regenerative beauty in rape. 

The memory of that night tore into my essence, left me heaving with wounds that I did not know how to heal. My mind, once enraptured by dreams and curiosity, was overcome by nightmares and terror. As a tree is cleaved by a bolt of lightning, I felt halved, separated in body and mind by the throes of disassociation. I struggled to find myself amidst the chaos. I sank into the anesthetizing effects of alcohol, drugs, and reckless sex. 

I remained silent in my suffering, slipping quietly into the depths of PTSD. I buried the rape with other nights, other encounters that reinforced my worth as nothing more than an object of sexual use. And on nights when drugs and sex failed to provide a temporary solace, I wandered the streets of Washington, D.C. alone, the dark night as my confidante. 

For many years, I walked to survive. There was something calming about my peripatetic wanderings, the steady pace of each step moving me towards no set destination. Unlike anything else in my life, the ground felt solid beneath my feet. 

——

As I hike along Rock Creek, the frayed synapses in my brain begin to calm. The park is a welcome change from the mid-day cacophony of the city and college campus, and it is here, walking in the woods and jumping on boulders, that I glimpse the lost unison between my body and mind. Alone in nature, I am attuned to my finite presence in an infinite universe. Stardust amidst stardust, born of the same creation. 

Sitting down cross-legged on a boulder that has settled a few inches above the rapids, I rub my hands over its textured form. Faint lines of color swirl across its surface in foliated lines, a testament to all it has endured in an intricate layering of memory and time. Speckles of quartz peek through deep and shallow crevices to reflect the sun’s rays in the rare moments that light pierces through the overcast sky. 

Science places the age of such rocks at 3.8 billion years. 

I am 19 years old. I’ve only lived about 615,000,000 seconds.
A collection of sparkling mica schist catches my eye. It lays scattered beneath the water’s surface, adorning the creek with the earth’s own natural jewelry. As another metamorphic rock, it too has endured the test of time. I dip my hand into the water to touch its bejeweled form, feeling the tips of my fingers burn, tingle, and then go numb from the cold. 

“What have you seen?” I whisper, imagining the rock might reveal its secrets to me. “What have you seen in this long life?”

With silence as an answer, I close my eyes as tears begin to fall and try to meditate. I practice being still. I yearn for wisdom to flow through the lined patterns of the boulder and into my being. I wish for the pain I carry to be deposited into its unbreakable form, or sent downstream, freeing me from suffering. 

After some time I stand up, cold and stiff. 

The rocks, having seen so much, are not surprised by my pain. 

Winter, 2016

The snow, pristine white in the earlier hours of the morning, has since been covered by the smudge of human activity. Dirt and car fumes have transformed the blank canvas into shades of brown and gray. Liquid pools on the sidewalk where boots have compressed the snowflakes, a metamorphosis of obliteration that will soon change again, into ice. The snowflakes, once independent and expressive, lie rigid and suppressed. The trees, stripped bare, endure the weight of snow while the plants remain rooted underground in acquiescence to the harsh winds and freezing temperatures above. 

My eyes water as wind chafes the contours of my cheeks. I walk down the snow-covered sidewalks of West Philadelphia, dragging a fifty-pound bag of books, deep grooves marking the path behind me. 

——

More than 300 species of spider mimic ants in a tactic known as myrmecomorphy, a deception which serves a dual purpose: to attract and attack prey, and to avoid detection by potential predators. These spiders evolved a “false waist” covered in hairs that resemble the curvatures of an ant, mannerisms that mimic antennas, and movements that match the erratic motions of wandering formicidae. The spiders move among their prey undetected, snatching victims from the colony with innocuous precision. 

——

Two years before that snowy day in Philadelphia, at the age of 22, I was living in New Zealand. Traveling to the remote island country had not provided an escape from the mental torment that haunted me back home, where the pull of suicidal ideation had taken hold with a malignant force. The sharp blades of knives and the edges of balconies beckoned with an increasing urgency. Exhausted by the weight of living, I feared the pain of another minute of life. Death as a philosophical concept had always intrigued me, and I wondered about the sensation of slipping into nonexistence. I imagined how it would feel to leave my body, to fully discard the reminder of trauma I couldn’t scrub clean. 

New Zealand was over 8,000 miles away from my midwestern home, and it was there, in that state of mind, that I was lured away from the shelter of my own colony of family and friends. Ensnared by woven webs of manipulative shame, abuse and control, I lay down in the seductive wrappings of a promised spiritual salvation. 

Hare Krishna Hare Krishna
Krishna Krishna Hare Hare
Hare Rama Hare Rama
Rama Rama Hare Hare

The place was called Bhakti Lounge, a hip yoga studio in Wellington that offered meditation, philosophy and vegan meals. The Sanskrit words of the Hare Krishna mantra flowed through my mind as an anesthetizing balm, accompanied by the heart-deep beat of a mridanga drum and the ethereal voices of the chanters. Everyone there looked happy, at ease.  

Sitting on the carpeted ground, cross-legged and swaying gently to the melody of the mantra, I experienced an unusual serenity. My mind and body were absorbed in the vibrations, and nothing else. When a three-course vegan meal followed, complete with dessert, I arrived at what seemed at the time to be an obvious conclusion — this place was a haven. 

——

By mimicking ants, the myrmecomorphic spider blends in as one of the crowd. The ants are oblivious to the predator in their midst. 

——

For years, I carried Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha as a spiritual guide on every venture — from Ghana, Rwanda, to New Zealand, and all the stops in between. With astounding linguistic prowess, the book brought together the love, unity, and respect for nature and all living beings that I craved in a spiritual practice. At Bhakti Lounge, the same Sanskrit words from Siddhartha — atman, brahman, samskara — were voiced by its members with insistently saccharine smiles. 

I was promised answers beyond what I had already learned if I explored the tradition of bhakti-yoga, the official denomination of the Hare Krishnas. There were endless books of Vedic wisdom that I could read and study under the guidance of a world traveling monk. Theirs was a universal wisdom that would cut through the pain of my past and deliver the peace and connection I desired, provide me with the highest, most esoteric, solutions to the many devastations I viewed as insurmountable. Bhakti-yoga was presented as a synthesis of everything I had studied to date — the Bible, the Quran, Buddhism, Paganism, Daoism. They said it brought everything together into one philosophy that I could not only learn, but experience. 

All it required was my devotion, and nothing more.

Intrigued, desperate, and lonely, my devotion seemed a small price to pay for an elusive peace.

As my exploration of bhakti-yoga began, the members dug into my past with a voracious hunger. I trusted their kindness and intention as spiritual mentors, sharing the details of my trauma and allowing them into the most painful chambers of my heart. It wasn’t long until their jeans and sweaters were swapped for saris and dhotis, a yoga studio for the rules of a religious institution, and the messages of love and compassion for condemnations of independence and individuality, of sexual impurities and damaged beings. The clothes that I had worn, the alcohol I had drank, the men I had slept with, all became the damned choices I had made in a futile attempt to be happy. Found guilty as my own worst enemy, they demanded obedience as restitution and warned that I should never trust myself again. 

Broken and lost, I believed them. 

I found myself caught — financially dependent, emotionally distraught, spiritually tethered to a man who claimed to be my spiritual master and father. After a year and a half in New Zealand, I was sent to Philadelphia to help open a new center. The seasons rotated through another five years of my life as their web wound thicker and thicker around me.

——

To earn our keep within the Hare Krishna organization, every day we were required to sell the books of the organization’s founder, Srila Prabhupada. The mantra: the more books you sell, the closer you are to God. In our efforts we were praised for targeting those who were weak and vulnerable, individuals in distress who were desperate for peace and happiness. The harsh streets of Philadelphia were full of such people, and we invited them to our programs with sweet words and false promises. 

I became the spider. I spun the same webs that had ensnared me.  

——

Leaving the ashram on that snow-laden morning in Philadelphia, my mind drifts to the beauty I once saw in falling snow. The way a layer of white reflects the light of stars and the moon, illuminating a world that would otherwise be dark. Snow is, in my memory, an otherworldly phenomenon. As a child, I had watched it fall from the sky through my bedroom window and found wonder in its delicate beauty. Yet here in Philadelphia, I forcefully banish those early thoughts of snow as they arrive. According to the doctrine we are taught, appreciating any aspect of nature’s beauty perpetuates attachment and eternal suffering in the cycle of birth and death. To get lost in snow would be to deny myself the chance of spiritual salvation.

Head down against the wind, I drag my bag to the bus stop. I have a quota of books to sell that day before I can return to the ashram, and my toes are already numb from the cold.

The destination, Rittenhouse Square, is a wealthy enclave in downtown Philadelphia with a tree-filled park as its centerpiece. Green ash trees grow through the concrete along the edges of the park, gnarled roots protruding from manmade confines. Green ash is native to Pennsylvania and sheds its leaves with urgency at the promise of winter. Standing bare against the city’s winds, having halted the process of photosynthesis, they wait in a state of stasis for spring. 

Just as the green ash has different names — red ash, swamp ash, water ash — I too have a different name now, one that ties me to the Hare Krishnas and to my spiritual master: Gaura-bhakti devi dasi, the servant of devotion to God. I rarely hear my birth name anymore, my past life fully subsumed by the new world I am a part of. It is a world that demands the essence of who I am be surrendered to them, unconditionally.

As the day progresses, I speak with calculated eloquence to hundreds of individuals who pass by on the street. “Do you do any yoga or meditation?” 

Some give me money, and I hand them books of half-truths and full lies. By the time I return to the ashram, it is dark and my book bag leaves only a negligible imprint in the snow. My toes are white with a bone-deep cold, but my pockets are full of crinkled cash and change. I have met the quota, and the ashram leader will be pleased. I will be praised for my spiritual purity and devotion. 

God, I have learned, is pleased not so much by love and truth, but by the accumulation of dollars. 

——

After removing one ant from the colony, the myrmecomorphic spider injects venom into the ant’s body, paralyzing its victim and liquidating its insides. The spider then sucks up the liquid organs and tissues of the ant, consuming its essence, before returning to the colony to repeat the process again and again. Only when caught in the act, only when another ant realizes that it is a spider that has killed one of its own, does the alarm sound. The colony swarms to kill the intruder. With great power in numbers, the spider is caught and killed. 

It took almost seven years for me to leave the Hare Krishnas. It was a gradual revelation — an unraveling of lies masked as truths, of abuse laced with assurances of love. I left with $72 in my bank account, no career, no friends, and an estranged family. Fueled by the realization of exploitation and abuse, I rallied the voices of others who had suffered a similar fate, and we presented with words our recollections of spiritual, emotional, labor and financial abuse. Allegations made against both the leader of the ashram and the man who posed as a spiritual master were presented to the international governing body of the Hare Krishna community, forcing a consideration of internal change and reparation. 

Power in numbers, as the ants well know, is a catalytic force of retribution. 

——

I am not there to see the awakening of the green ash trees in Rittenhouse Square when winter comes to an end. I am no longer Gaura-bhakti devi dasi. 800 miles away, back in my hometown of Glen Ellyn, I watch from the window of my childhood bedroom as twin dogwood trees spring to life with small yellow flowers. In the presence of my family, I reclaim the name Justine Rose.

I wonder at my parents’ choice, to give their daughter a name which carries within its meaning the act of justice rising.

Spring, 2021

Symplocarpus foetidus. Skunk cabbage. They are hard to find at first. Their mottled, brownish-purple spathes blend in with the forest floor, covered as it is with brown leaves and spots of snow still clinging to winter. Buds on the trees protrude as plum-colored nubs, still sheathed in a waxy layer to protect them from the cold and prevent an early bloom. The warmth of spring has not yet surpassed the chill of winter. 

I scan the ground with focus, searching for the first sign of the skunk cabbage’s camouflaged growth. Once I find one, it is easy to spot the others. They dot the landscape, peaking out three or four inches above the surface of the earth. They appear as an earthly announcement: skunk cabbage in the suburbs of Chicago, nestled in the protected acres of Black Partridge Woods, are an indication that spring has come. 

——

Like all perennials, the skunk cabbage retreats beneath the topsoil for the duration of winter, hibernating in a state of stasis with only its core remaining, sugars stored in its roots to protect the plant from freezing. However, unlike its perennial brethren, skunk cabbage has the unique gift of thermogenesis — the ability to generate its own heat. Fostering an internal temperature of up to 60 degrees, the skunk cabbage thrusts through the remnants of frozen earth and snow, melting away any resistance to make its yearly appearance. As it grows above the surface, it emits an odor of decaying flesh, attracting flies and fulfilling its biological need for pollination. 

——

I kneel down next to the miraculous plant, close enough for it to reveal its hidden treasure to me. The skunk cabbage’s spathe, covered by a maroon spadix, is an elegantly speckled stalk with small, spiky yellow flowers. Putting my face close to its form, I inhale the scent of a dying animal — undeniably alive, yet reminiscent of death. Crinkling my nose, the sensations of awe and disgust battle for preeminence. 

Brushing my fingers against the spathe’s thick and smooth surface, the skunk cabbage feels resilient, impenetrable. Within a few months it will grow up to three feet tall, brilliant green leaves spiraling outwards in funnel-shaped rosettes while its roots bury deeper and deeper into the soil. The root system of a skunk cabbage grows downwards and outwards simultaneously in a thick web of unbranched, fibrous tendrils that provide the plant with an impenetrable, unbreakable, foundation. 

Sitting down amidst the precocious protrusions, I take out my ukulele. It was an impulsive decision to buy an instrument I did not know how to play, but I loved how its musical tenors could make even the saddest lyrics sound upbeat. Strumming with cold fingers the few chords I have learned, I begin to sing and write, scribbling down lyrics in a haphazard manner on the pages of a small notebook. I write “Rewind,” the simplistic chorus an ode to the painful regret that haunts me: 

“Let me just stop…and start again
a rewind on this life
If I could stop…and start again
maybe I could make it right”

It has been four months since I left the Hare Krishna ashram, and I am 28 years old. 

A few days before leaving the ashram, I cried into the phone as I told my dad that I needed to come home. Shame and guilt heated my face. A fear of reprisal from the ashram leader and my spiritual master triggered my sweaty palms into a constant palpitation against each other.

My parents drove fifteen hours from Chicago to Philadelphia to pick me up on December 29th, 2020, my few belongings stuffed into large, black garbage bags. I avoided my mom’s gaze in the rearview mirror as tears spilled from the corners of my eyes. I was painfully aware of the years of distance; of time lost and opportunities missed; of relationships neglected and abandoned. I wished for a reversal of time, an elusive and impossible chance to go back and make different decisions. 

I mourned a lost decade of life as my heart crippled with regret.  

More than anything, I feared an uncertain and tainted future. 

Walking back to my car, ukulele slung across my back, I wonder how the skunk cabbage feels, having returned to the world after a long, dark slumber. What reservoirs of strength percolate beneath the surface, only to suddenly rise up with the promise of spring? Does it appreciate life more in this ascent, having experienced what it was like to be held in stasis?

Refrain, 2021

Over two decades past that summer morning when Emma and I searched for fairies, I walk through a local forest at dawn. Passing a hollow in a tall oak tree, I wonder at the home of a gnome. Dipping my toes in a stream that gurgles over stones and branches, I enter into the realm of fairies. The cells in my body have been replaced four times over, but the experience of wonder in nature is still mine to access. 

I sink into memories seen through the eyes of a child, memories long forgotten, and feel the innermost depths of my heartwood pulse in recognition. Pushing aside the rationale of science and human pre-eminence, I reach for the worldview of my eight-year old self. It is a youthful optimism and curiosity I once sought to escape but now fight to repossess.

Walking on the forest’s paths, the realization strikes as an epiphany: who I was, and who I am, are rooted in the same source.  

——

Months later, I jump across rocks in a mountain creek, surrounded by the autumnal foliage of Georgia’s Blue Ridge Mountains.

I am attending a retreat for survivors of sexual assault, and while others lay down to rest between activities, I cavort with the changing winds. Beneath a canopy of colorful trees, I bask in the magic of komorebi — the way light filters playfully through the leaves of trees. Draped discreetly across knotted brush, I admire the web of a spider so intricately spun. Skipping rocks in the creek, I watch as clear water hurdles over tiny rapids, manifesting the resilient force that flows through 60% of our own bodies. As I run up the slope of a nearby ridge, the thrum of my heart reminds me of the choice I have made to live. 

When we shatter a ceramic bowl as part of a workshop to learn the Japanese art of kintsugi, where broken pieces are pieced back together with gold lacquer in a design meant to be more beautiful than the original, I cry. I remember the gneiss boulder at Rock Creek with its colorful lines and the sparkling mica schist. 

I am 29 years old, 930,000,000 seconds into life, when the stones finally reveal their secret to me: the beauty — the strength — was there all along. Having suffered the trials of life, having been unwillingly shaped by external forces, it just manifests more brilliantly than before.

——

When winter arrives, the days turn dark and cold. I watch as my dad places the first ornament on the Christmas tree. It’s an intricately designed fairy, with a gently blushing and cherubic face, and feathered wings that spread out behind a ruby red and white felted dress. The fairy gazes at me, her eyes wide open. Written on the back of one wing is my dad’s calligraphic writing, engraved there the year that Emma and I ventured outside to look for fairies on a cool summer morning. I reach up to where it dangles, brushing the scent of white pine across my fingertips. I turn it over and read what is written:  Justine Rose, 2000. 

About the Author:

Justine Payton is an MFA candidate at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington where she is a recipient of the Philip Gerard Graduate Fellowship and the Bernice Kert Fellowship in Creative Writing. She has been published or has work forthcoming in Writerly Magazine, The Keeping Room, Wild Roof Journal, HerStry, The Masters Review, Roi Fainéant Press and others. She is currently working on a memoir as well as a collection of essays exploring intangible losses associated with climate change. Alongside one of her best friends, she serves as the managing editor of ONLY POEMS.

*Feature image by Nagara Oyodo on Unsplash