Never Have I Ever

by Joshilyn Jackson

barnacled onto me until I was at home, for the first time in my life.

But of course I knew what kind. I had met her. A shit stirrer.

Women in denial shoved at people who told them truths they were not ready to hear. Shoved them

hard, all the way out of their lives.

Isn’t that what diving gave me? To float in the same space as the truth, silent and unafraid.

every single one of them was living with their own worst thing, just fine. No one walks around holding their ugliest sin in the palm of their hand, staring at it. Our hurts are heavy, and we let them sink.

Every day they drift lower, settling in murky places where the light can’t reach.

Every mammal protected its own babies, including rats and weasels.

Just breathe, and love the person she’d grown into. It felt so meant-to-be.

I had changed, and she wasn’t going to like it.

She disappeared into the darkness and the blue. The way everything does, eventually. Acknowledgments When I first had the idea for

We punish the poor more quickly and more severely; sometimes it feels as if being poor is itself a crime. And, of course, race is a huge factor as well.

Art matters. Education matters. All people matter.