strummed raze once, when i was sure i wouldn't live to see my nineteenth year, i cradled the guitar he was always leaving at my house — a battered washburn he gave a holy hebrew woman's name — turned the tuning keys to send the strings to some strange place he would never let them know, and conjured a song out of every torn tendril of myself i was brave enough to touch. i sang to someone who was too many miles away to hear me, who existed only in the ruins of my imagination: "well, you're one in a million. one of a kind. and you're just a placenta." the word i wanted was "placebo". but there was more emotional truth stitched into the mistake than i realized. in comparing the object of my misplaced affection to an organ attached to the umbilical cord, providing me with oxygen and nutrients only to be surgically removed once i'd grown dependent on it, i was owning my beginning while hoping for an ending that might drag its feet long enough to let me know what it was to be alive in the guts of a day that didn't want to break me. 250511 what's it to you? who go blather from