I am Emma.
Flighty, eccentric, pretty, anxious, kind, tired, cranky, off my cracker, doesn't pass 100%, doesn't need to pass 100%, infuriating. I overreact, I don't react, I'm jaded, these bills don't pay themselves, my baby is lovely. My history is not at all like your history, with one or two glaring exceptions.
I once stopped a group of people with my words, under my breath, and a grown woman cried as I gave birth to the last line, "after the fire is dead, only sad ashes linger." I can't defeat it. It moves me and keeps me from going back. I was in a daze for two weeks once and a young man told me I had the most interesting DNA.
I hugged an East Oakland gangster that still had another man's blood on his shirt. I had nothing to do with anything except calling his caretaker and getting him to a safer place. I sat on the train 4 rows away from a group of kids drinking vodka and snorting cocaine, wondering if they were going to be business men one day. The system bit me and I'm hobbled now. They fire shots not far from here pretty often. I used to believe someone in the neighborhood had an AK... My coworker was robbed at gunpoint last week in the store parking lot. I wake up at 3 am to ride my bike through this Hell to work.
I have held a ringtail, I have trapped, tagged, and tracked bats for scientific study. I have dabbled with benthic microinvertebrates. I have published written works. I have slept in the Mojave Desert with rattlesnakes and scorpions about. I have slept in Yosemite. I have slept on a 3 foot square with nothing to cover me at all. I drowned once. I had strep throat in the base of my brain when I was a kid. I'm still alive.
I'm STILL working on it.
