Eunhae Han’s Reviews > The Moon Without Stars > Status Update

ON VALENTINE'S DAY, MY CARDS WERE SECURELY packed, explanation and apology ready, spring-loaded on my tongue.

Puberty was like a combination between the words PU and liberty, a stinky type of freedom and autonomy. Girls leaked blood, boys grew like beanstalks, hair sprouted, voices cracked. We were in limbo, half baked, wedged in the in-between, and I needed to pay attention if I was going to keep up.

It's true I've never been anywhere without a pen. Once I saw a straw in a coconut and I understood; the coconut is my brain, the pen gets inserted into it and sucks out my thoughts. A pen puncturing my mind is graphic; what I mean is that if I can't write, my head is full of noise. When people don't write, where do their thoughts go? Aren't their heads constipated? I imagine their heads

Don't let small minds define you.

*Remember, the goal is not perfection, it's to preserve the perspective that is yours alone. Your depiction is not meant to be ideal; you must make honest attempts where you are with what you've got. It is your duty to make an attempt, that is the power you have."

Something clicked into place inside me when I heard it.
Book doctor. I was never going to be the white-coat kind, but I could write literary prescriptions, give people books that might speak to how they were hurting. Language as a balm for emotional wounds. Words as anchors when people felt adrift. I wasn't going to solve anything necessarily, but I could always make things a little better than they were before.