“Words have always swirled around me like snowflakes-each one delicate and different, each one melting untouched in my hands.”

“Words.I’m surrounded by thousands of words. Maybe millions. Cathedral. Mayonnaise. Pomegranate.Mississippi. Neapolitan. Hippopotamus.Silky. Terrifying. Iridescent.Tickle. Sneeze. Wish. Worry.Words have always swirled around me like snowflakes—each one delicate and different, each one melting untouched in my hands.Deep within me, words pile up in huge drifts. Mountains of phrases and sentences and connected ideas. Clever expressions. Jokes. Love songs.From the time I was really little—maybe just a few months old—words were like sweet, liquid gifts, and I drank them like lemonade. I could almost taste them. They made my jumbled thoughts and feelings have substance. My parents have always blanketed me with conversation. They chattered and babbled. They verbalized and vocalized. My father sang to me. My mother whispered her strength into my ear.Every word my parents spoke to me or about me I absorbed and kept and remembered. All of them.I have no idea how I untangled the complicated process of words and thought, but it happened quickly and naturally. By the time I was two, all my memories had words, and all my words had meanings.But only in my head.I have never spoken one single word. I am almost eleven years old.”

“Vaginas are, after all, like snowflakes, only warmer and softer, and bleed like a gaping wound monthly…wait, what was I saying? Oh, right, vaginas are like snowflakes in that each one is different. So that fancy two-finger swirl trick that worked wonders on your last girlfriend? Yeah, no guarantee it’ll work the same way on the new one.”

“Memories fall like snowflakes upon my dreams. The snowflakes toss and tumble, each different and yet the same.”

“We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand and melting like a snowflake...”

“Snowflakes fascinate me... Millions of them falling gently to the ground... And they say that no two of them are alike! Each one completely different from all the others... The last of the rugged individualists!”