In May 1987, my family piled into a distressingly bright orange Volvo station wagon and left Pennsylvania for southeast Texas. My new home was shockingly different. It was hot, with air like split pea soup full of bugs that bite. Unfamiliar humidity perfumed the breeze. People talked funny, said my name wrong. I felt like a foreigner, a sore thumb, a shirt on inside out and backwards.  When we arrived, my brother and I had to be enrolled in school, which required an in-person placement test. I wanted everyone to like me and make a good impression, so I dressed up. I put on my favorite white romper with the lettuce edge and primary-colored balloon print. A bow of looped shoelaces clipped in front of my ponytail. A couple water-filled glitter bracelets nearly sliding off my skinny wrists. And I wore my my most awesome shoes.   They were violent pink dress-up heels with black soles. Pretend play shoes. Not soft like the clear plastic jellies I wore that got pebbles lodged i...

Once upon a time, on the zippered edge where two cities meet, there was a bra.  It was a bra of unremarkable color - darker than beige but lighter than mocha - whose cups stood proud if lonesome. It was a bra of indeterminate size - bigger than an A cup but smaller than Milwaukee. It was a bra with a story.  *Actual bra not pictured One May afternoon this bra suddenly found itself lounging in the westbound lane of Center Ridge Road, not far from a Taco Bell restaurant. Its hook-side pointed to one zip code; its eye-side, another. It was out of place in so many ways. But how did it get there?  Did it take flight from atop a load of laundry traveling in a cracked plastic hamper in the back seat of a 1998 Toyota Corolla, soaring through a rolled-down window to exciting lands unknown?  Had it been hastily stuffed into the cup holder of a late-model Mercedes during a moment of stolen passion, after which incriminating evidence had to be hastily discarded? Was it torn from...