Yesterday my second collection of poetry and prose was published. Crossroads is available now and you can find it here.

In more ways than not, my life is different now. Different from when Fool’s Gold found its way into the world earlier this year, different from the time I opened this blog, so different from this time last summer it’s dizzying. In 2021 alone, my world was terraformed so completely that so much of what has made me me has been dismantled. But that’s not a somber thing. Too much of what we grow accustomed to shackles us into place. Uncomfortable unseatings are what invite the unexpected into our lives. And the best of what I have now was unexpected.

Even the way I celebrate. When Fool’s Gold was published I bought a bottle of my favorite champagne, I put on a $400 dress and ordered myself a cake. Yesterday I drank sparkling apple cider out of monogrammed mugs and blew out the candles with my favorite person in my underwear. And it was just as good.

Crossroads is a disorganized mapping of all the ways my life diverged since this year began. The things so beautiful they became harrowing. The depths so unseemly I wondered if I’d find my way out. How all these things seemed like shifting paths and dead ends and how they all ended up coming together in the end to shepherd me somewhere divine.

Crossroads is the culmination of a lesson I had to learn, or rather lessons I learned over and over again until they couldn’t be ignored. Life requires tolls. While things may often sort themselves out on their own, they just as often dig their heels into the fabric of the universe and wait for you to make a move. To get to where we want to be, we have to make sacrifices, we have to leave things behind, we have to make hard choices that don’t sit right or wrap themselves up into pleasant bows. My path along this crossroads is littered just as much with bodies as it is daisies. And I would do it all again to find my way back here.

And so I will continue paying these tolls. The time in my life for these sacrifices hasn’t come to an end just because I closed the book on it. But they’ll stop surprising me. I’ll be less afraid to meet them.

A year ago, I was just at the beginning. I hadn’t written a book, I still answered to names I didn’t want to be called, I wasn’t yet with the love of my life. A year ago, I wrote: “I’ve kept the company of many crossroads and too often took the less inclined route. It’s always led me back to the same delta of indecision.” And yesterday I made my peace with them.