How We Fight For Our Lives by Saeed Jones

I recently read the memoir, How We Fight For Our Lives, by Saeed Jones. This is an intense and wonderfully distilled book. I love reading memoir by poets, and this is no exception. I recommend you check it out. (Assuming you are okay with the book’s at times brutal but necessary-to-tell contents. We need more stories like this.)

Ther’re so much power and beauty in this book. This passage really got me, because I’m obsessed with dust (as metaphor and noun):

p. 110: “Moving out of your longtime home means quite literally unsettling the dust of your past. Dust shimmers in the air, coloring rays of sunshine as they cut through the windows. Dust marks the outlines of where your childhood bed used to be. Dust collects in your hair. Your body unwittingly inhales your past and rejects it.”