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I spend so much time in my tepee, the month of October passes with me inside. I cover the pine needles with blankets and lie down and look up at the long thin poles and the way Agatha has stripped them of their bark. That gets me to thinking about stripping my own bark.

One morning after I wash the breakfast dishes, I take one of the notebooks I bought for Bo. I lie back and look up at the way Agatha has interlocked the poles at the top of the tepee, and I think about my life. Then I write My Life, Chapter One on the cover.

I open to the first page and my words fly. I forget everything I know about poetic meter and active voice and the right word and the not-so-right word because my words come too fast and too furious to slow down.

I write the story of my mother’s leaving. It wasn’t like one day she was here and the next day she left. It’s like one day she left a little. And then the next day she left a little more. And then she started falling asleep on the couch instead of hugging me. I would crawl up with her and put her arms around me and snuggle against her. But that’s when I was little. Later, her arms got thin and then it didn’t feel so safe anymore.

I prayed a lot then. Please make my mother not leave me. But God didn’t listen. Why?

And then I write the story of me leaving myself. I remember when I started stuttering. It wasn’t like one day I didn’t stutter and then one day I did. It was one day I stuttered just a little. And then I got scared and the next day I stuttered a little more. Before I knew it I was stuttering all the time. I started noticing that when I stuttered, people looked away. That hurt worse than the stuttering, so I started looking away from myself. I’d look at my feet, the ground, the floor because I was too scared to look them in the eyes. I stopped talking. I got too scared to try.

When I was eight, I began to pray, Please, God, help me not stutter. But God didn’t listen. Why?

Now I live with Agatha. She’s built me this tepee that I spend hours inside each day. I pray my mother will come, but my birthday comes and goes with no sign of her. God still isn’t listening. Why?

And then I cry. The wound in my throat finally lets go.