Things I'm afraid of: Heights, moths, butterflies, and death 

Things I love: My family, my friends, my granddaddy's war stories, and my grandmamas cakes. 

Things I hate: Mean people and Racism and when my hair freezes all the way out of control and it gets as big as the moon.

Things I want: for someone to love me as much as my mama loves my daddy, I want that love that grows in the pit of your stomach and rises slowly up your throat and comes out painting the floor in beautiful pinks and oranges. 

Things I don't believe in: my brothers girlfriend, over night love, and the moon landing in 1969. 

Things almost no one knows about me: Sometimes I like to go on my roof and watch the stars as they dance around the sky for the moon. I like taking boiling hot showers when I finish crying to make sure I can still feel something.

When I was five my mama told me, one night when the bees where singing and the grasshoppers where playing their tiny violins. My mama and daddy decided that they loved each other so much and couldn't live without each other. My daddy held my mama close and took her brain right out of her head and ripped a piece off along with a tiny piece of her heart and she took one of his lungs and a piece of his stomach and a whole lot of freezer burnt ego waffles. All night they worked with the bloody globs of strawberry jam and pineapple jelly until both their hands where tired of working. My mama took the messy blob and swallowed it whole. That next day my Grandmama rushed my mama to the hospital and that's how I got a big brother. When my mama looked at him she said she could see herself all in him, she could hear het heart and his beating as one, she could see her brain in his skull, and all those freezer burnt waffles all in his bones. She named him Pram which means love in Indian. Because he was made from love.

Two years later they did the same thing except they took my daddy's entire heart my mamas guts and her fingers nails and mixed it in a pot with honey and all the French vanilla in the house and my daddy said he secretly put a sip of my granddaddy's beer. For two days they mixed the concoction up until my daddy finally said it was ready. My mom then picked it up and chewed the sweet chewy mass until it was all gone. She said when she finally had me she looked at me and thought I was gorgeous, she knew I was going to be hard headed like my daddy and sweet like my grandaddy. She finally decided on the name Malla which she told me she read in a book once, it means goddess. 

Once my brother told me that he read that it means bitter and I was upset for seven days. I cried for six days and six nights. I cried so hard I flooded our house and washed away all our plants and ruined our soil when the seventh night came around I was angry I grabbed Pram by his heart and dragged him outside where I took my little pink garden shovel and dug for the piece of my mamas heart. Before I could finish my daddy pulled me off of Pram and told me this. 

"Baby girl. It doesn't matter what he says your name means or what your mama says your name means. What matters is what you make it mean."

When I was nine I moved from Florida all the way to a small town in Texas maybe four hours from Mexico. It was me, my mama, my daddy, and my brother. We lived with my daddy's brother Carter and his wife Leslie and their two sons CJ (short for Carter junior) and Alex. Alex was ten and a half and CJ was almost thirteen So him and Pram never wanted to play with little kids like me and Alex, they where to busy at the skate park and at the beach with all the older white boys they where friends with. While me and Alex where left to our own devices while both our mamas worked at the laundromat and our daddy's worked at the construction site. He use to play in his daddy's clothes while I played in his mamas makeup until his mama got mad and said we had to stop. We jumped in the rain and rolled around in puddles then I got sick and my mama told me we can't play in the rain no more. That's when Alex had the idea to go to the beach.

After we got out of church we ran through the sand and water at high tide, the water splashed on my face and muddy sand got all over my pink and white Sunday dress. His kisses felt like the wings of butterflies against my lips and when I got home and my daddy saw my dress my mamas shoe felt like bee stings all over my body. After that my mama told us not to play in good clothes no more and I promised her I wouldn't. A few days later I asked Alex if he wanted to play and he said no. He pulled my hair and made me fall down the stairs and I screamed for Pram to help me and when Pram came he saw the magenta syrup that was running from my nose and the purple and blue bruises that where covering my shoulders. Pram started screaming things like "What the fuck?" and "Why'd you do that?" Pram grabbed Alex and dragged him by his brain reminding me of the day I dragged him by his heart. Pram slammed Alex's head against the door and knocked some of his brain out along with a piece of his tooth. Before Pram could finish and get all the venom out of his heart my daddy came through the door.  He saw me laying on the floor, a swollen mess with strawberry blood all over my clothes. While Pram tried to gather Alex's brains and put it back in before my daddy really noticed. 

Me and Alex didn't talk for a while after that and I was real lonely. I started going to the beach by myself and I started to make friends with the sun and the moon and the stars. I named all the stars and wrote a love story about the sun and moon. My life went on like that for three months and I started to like being alone with my thoughts. I liked thinking and laying in the sand. One day I was real sad, I had over heard my mama telling my daddy that my granddaddy was sick and we didn't have the money to fly back to Florida. When they left for work with sad smiles on their faces I looked for Alex and sat in front of him. He ignored me. I stomped and screamed and yelled at the top of my French vanilla coated lungs for him to listen to me. When he finally did I asked why he didn't wanna play with me no more. He said I was a cry baby and a snitch. I told him I wouldn't cry no more and I wouldn't tell Pram anything else. Alex stared deep into my eyes with his brown eyes that looked like the color of swamp water. And I told him I swear not to tell Pram or my mama and daddy nothin’. He smiled at me and we played again the next day he took me to his special hideout, he said CJ use to go with him but now he's too cool for it. When we went it was like a dream, everything happened so fast and all I could do was squeeze my eyes shut as tight as possible and hold onto the clumps of lime green colored grass and think about my mama and daddy singing to me and Pram reading his big heavy chapter books to me until it was all over. After it was over and Alex sat next to me staring around at the old broken down house I didn't cry. 

I didn't cry until we got home and I excused myself from dinner to use the bathroom. I stayed in the bathroom for a long time until my mama and daddy started to worry about me. Things went on like that for almost seven months I wanted to tell Pram so bad, I was confused and I didn't understand but I swore I wouldn't be a cry baby. I didn't want to be a cry baby. One night when Pram snuck out out of the room we shared Alex snuck in like a Fox stealing eggs. As sneaky and quietly as possible, like always I bit my lip and closed my eyes as tight as possible and thought about my grandmamas cakes. It didn't hurt as much as it use to but Alex said it'd be better each time. When he was about done the door open and Alex fell off me. I just laid there looking at my big brother who was being held on to by my daddy. When my daddy saw me and Alex he let go of Pram and grabbed me and rushed me to my mama. My mama screamed her eyes swelled and the Caspian sea fell from her eyes onto my head. My aunt Leslie came into my mamas room and she looked scared. I could hear her heart beat and her organs start to shift, it didn't surprise me when they ended up on the floor. My mama took me Carter and Leslie's bathtub and soaked me while Leslie sat on the toilet crying and my mama pored milk in my hair. My mama tried to sing over all the boys screaming but I heard everything so clearly. Sometimes I still hear it. That was the last night we stayed at Uncle Carter and Aunt Leslie's house, the last time I attended public school, and the last time my daddy spoke to his brother.