I’ve had many jobs before this one and will have many after, but this is where I learn one of the most vital lessons: if your own story is one you ar… - Andrea Gibson

month into the job, I can’t look at any of the girls without seeing my baby sister’s face the first time someone hurt her on purpose. It wasn’t my sister’s grief so much as her shock that stuck with me. None of these girls are shocked by the hurt that hunts them — they expect the blade of this life to keep cutting and ask it to whittle them into someone too sharp to touch.

We were all born on days when too many people died in terrible ways, but you still have to call it a birthday.

I explain my gender by saying I am happiest on the road when I'm not here or there, but in between, that yellow line coming down the center of it all like a goddamn sunbeam.