Ruvanee Vilhauer

Audiobooks are my summer reading go-to. Winter will find me in a scalding hot tub, reading for hours while soaking the bottom edge of whatever paperback I’m clutching. In the fall I’m particularly vigorous about evening reading with my children before bedtime, and in the spring I have all my students take their independent reading books out to the courtyard to read under the trees. But the summer is…busy. As an elementary librarian, I’m off work. My kids aren’t on a schedule.

I think I was twelve when I first began wondering whether people could control their bodies—their pain and bleeding—with their minds. I was crushed against a loud crowd of spectators smelling of coconut oil, jasmine garlands and rank armpits, with the mid-afternoon sun beating down on me. I remember that my friend and I were in our white school uniforms, which were grimy and damp with sweat from our afterschool games. We were waiting impatiently, chewing on sticks of sugar cane.