From Damaged Like Me: Essays on Love, Harm and Transformation (AK Press 2021) by Kimberly Dark
Damaged, Like Me
I.
I saw a porno snuff film for the first time in Las Vegas, more than thirty-five years ago. I was there recently for a professional conference and the memory came back slowly. Which boyfriend was I with? Did I get up and leave? I know I didn’t see the end.
Continue reading “Kimberly Dark”
Safe is Halfway Across the World
“Otaghet boo adam gerefte” (your room smells like human). This is a classic Ariana expression meaning your room is getting stuffy. Before I can sit up on the bed, she walks to the back of the bedroom and opens the room’s only tiny window. “And clean this mess, will you?” pointing to the bedroom floor. We go back and forth between English and Persian.
Continue reading “Shahrzad Sajadi”
In Memoriam
September 30, 2021
Four months ago, my partner and I broke up.
We were together for six years. We met during our first year in graduate school. We clung to each other like lost children. We had sex the first time we kissed. Twenty-four hours later, they told me I was the one. I was the one for years. The one who got lost in a department store in New Jersey. The one who was bullied for being Asian. The one with the traumatic memories. The one who almost made their mother faint with their difficultness.
Continue reading “MT Vallarta”
what a diagnosis is
a way to justify a pill prescription,
a dull tool,
one doctor’s opinion,
an idea we can ponder
in the isolation room,
What Is Gaslighting?
Gaslighting: manipulating someone, by psychological means, into doubting their own sanity.[1] This may involve saying something and later denying having said it, making you question your memory, making you feel that everything is your fault, and even outright lying to you (and possibly those around you). Continue reading “Gaslighting”
Madwomen in the Attic 