ABSTRACT
Gawking, gaping, staring: I can’t say when it first happened. When first a pair of eyes caught me, held me in their vice grip, tore skin from muscle, muscle from bone. Those eyes always shouted, “Freak, retard, cripple,” demanding an answer for tremoring hands, a tomboy’s bold and unsteady gait I never grew out of. It started young, anywhere I encountered humans. Gawking, gaping, staring seeped into my bones, became the marrow. I spent thirty years shutting it out, slamming the door.
