Finding my courage to speak up twenty-five years after I was raped, writing Speak, and talking with countless survivors of sexual violence made me who I am today.

This book shows how that happened.

It’s filled with the accidents, serendipities, bloodlines, tidal waves, sunrises, disasters, pass¬port stamps, criminals, cafeterias, nightmares, fever dreams, readers, portents, and whispers that have shaped me so far.

My father wrote poetry, too. He gave me these guidelines: we must be gentle with the living, but the dead own their truth and are fearless. So I’ve written honestly about the challenges my parents faced and how their struggles affected me. The poems that reference people other than me or my family are truth told slant; I’ve muddled specific details to protect the identities of survivors.

This is the story of a girl who lost her voice and wrote herself a new one.