I buy all of my books and garments secondhand. I want my stories to have stories to tell and my shoes to already have miles in them. By the time they make it to me, my dresses have been on journeys and my books have already seen tears. I’m not precious about anything in life except life itself. I don’t need something to be new, I don’t even need it to be pristine. I need it to be worldly and well loved and have something to say for itself. 

All of my pets are from the streets. They were left in boxes or to roam Dallas, knowing nothing of the king sized bed they now crowd in like they’ve never known anything else. I don’t need to pick one out of the patch like the perfect gourd. I don’t need lumbering baby steps or puppy breath. Because I can tell from their walks and the way they run off leash that they know something of this world they’re in and when they smile at me or huddle for my body warmth, that it’s even sweeter than any naturally made nectar to these little nomads. 

My whole life is a federation of derelicts. Clashing colors and dissenting styles. I’ve built my world out of pasted together missed connections. And somehow, it all works. This little space, insignificant and on no maps, somehow became the place where lost things go to be found. My walls are filled with stories screamed of past lives. I’ll take the reincarnated vagabonds any day, they always have something to say.