“When the shadow starts moving, run.”

(Walking በጠፍ ጨረቃ, in America)

OH NO, legs!

No, trees.

No, poles.

Poles!

“Ethiopian” American writers

Year 10: I am thrice [self] published and diagnosed with Stage 0 Breast Cancer

And if I were able to go back in time and fix all the things that stack the odds against me, would I have:

• Never smoked [and dealt with my crippling anxiety differently]
• Never take a drink [and pass the time some other way]
• Have kids?

The answer:

• No
• No
• And.…….. no.

Would I have a kid right now, at this very moment, if I was told it would save my life?!

Nope. I would have an aquarium, with three gold fish in it. And a dog [and a small house in the suburbs with a pond, a swing set, and a little garden to plant flowers, vegetables, and a fruit tree].

If I can’t afford the house, then a cozy room apartment in the Capitol Hill neighborhood that over-looks a garden, is surrounded by trees – some of them fruit trees – with an access to a water-body and at a walking distance from the local bakery [where you can sit, drink coffee, and work on your laptop for hours] would do.

If that is not to be either, I would take:

• A tap dancing class [because I like tap dancing. It is like Red Bull. It gives you wings]
• Going and visiting New York [So I can walk through Central park in the Fall season/look at Brooklyn bridge from afar/and ride a ferry to Manhattan and take a stroll in its “fabulous” neighbourhoods thinking about the ladies of “Sex and the City”; eat Gifelte fish/New York-style pizza/a burger from White Castle or a bagel from a Jewish deli; hail a cab on Broadway and win some “Cash Cab” money]
• Keep dreaming of someday going to Italy [to visit Venice, it’s architectures, have a grand breakfast before taking a stroll on its cobbled stone streets/riding a gondola/and feeding the pigeons in St. Mark’s Square]; and/or to live in a cottage near an England countryside and read lots and lots of books

The plan:

• Get the treatment I need up to, and excluding, Mastectomy [if you have seen a nipple-less breast, like I did, you would not want to do it to anyone you love, least of all yourself – even if you aren’t crazy about yourself].
• If it works, then try to live a more meaning-full life – ditch the self-consciousness/the [“Catholic”] guilt/the inability to live a day at a time; go to school to study editing/and pen a book people would actually be interested in reading; and adopt an ugly little orphan [say a black girl who reminds me of my younger self] and give her all the love I can.
• If not, take out all the money I made/saved/borrowed from Wells Fargo bank using my fabulous credit score, go home, and die among the fam.

If I do not, that is, die from a bullet or car accident because some asshole decided to text and drive.

For now, here are the the books I wrote [the “houses” I “built”, so to say], in their order of conception! I earn about $0.35 cents a book [while paying $11/month to Microsoft to keep editing them on Word]. So I am not doing this for financial gains. I am doing it because the one thing I would undo from my teenage-years, the one thing I bitterly regret/am still very embittered about/will never forgive those who misled me for, is giving up 10 years of reading and writing [secular] books so I could be found worth Christ’s love as a super committed “ጴንጤ ቆስጤ”. Stopping writing at the height of my craft, at that! Thank you — Conservative Christianity [my wretched childhood, my fat ugly mug, and my paternal father]. I fucking owe you one!

[“It’s always good to blame the parents, right?” :)]

Click here to see my “babies” on Amazon.

“If I could only draw, and knew how to paint”

“The Ethiopian- a love letter”

“Ghiorgis” – Based on a [mostly] true story.