The building is beautiful.

It doesn’t look like a museum at all; it looks like a book laid open. The top right edge of the building appears lifted, as though the page is turning. The top left corner appears folded, as though someone marked her place by dog-earing the paper. Cast against fading sunlight surrounded by fields of wild honeysuckle and dandelions, the cream building almost looks like part of a fairytale. Only the cracked window carved into the thickest part of the left-hand page reveals the truth: this isn’t a fairytale castle proclaiming victory; it’s a broken shell clinging to unfulfilled promises. Even the name reads like an interrupted thought: sprawled across the center of the book are the words

The Museum of A lm o st

The letters drift, as if they can’t bear to admit the lostness of what’s inside. Colors change too–from deep black to a barely distinguishable smoky gray. Walking closer to the entrance–a set of heavy, French double doors set in the same cream as the rest of the book–ah, building–-I notice fragrant honeysuckle growing alongside weeds near the entrance. Danger chases beauty.

The air inside is warm. The scent of honeysuckle continues here but it is so faint I wonder if it’s just a memory. Lighting is low and simple: scones attached to the wall every so often. It isn’t bright, but it’s illuminated in warmth, providing just enough light to see. There are no exhibits here, no desk to purchase tickets. Instead, my eye is drawn to a plaque hanging near a door. The pat pat of my feet walking against the marble floor is the loudest thing in the room. The placard is a dark grey with the words written in a soft grey. To see them, I need to draw closer than I normally would.

Welcome to the Museum of Almost
You’ll notice the neutral tones of decor.
It is easiest to hide if you don’t stand out.
We hope you’ll watch for any deviations.

When ready, please enter through the far door.
Your tour begins there.

Cost of Admission:
You may enter as a visitor but you will leave
as a witness. The distance between almost and
enough is maintained by those who look away.

Silence grows heavier the longer I stand. There are no windows in this hall and I cannot hear movements of other people. I read the message again:

…you will leave as a witness.

A witness to what?

From somewhere in the shadowy corners of my mind, memories swirl. One of the scones flickers twice before going dark. Silence presses on me and my feet move, nearly by themselves, towards the set of doors at the end of the hall. Stepping into a smaller room, the air changes, growing a bit cooler. The room stands empty except for a small glass case near a wall. A single beam of light shines down on the contents of the case. Something tugs on my heart, pulling me closer. As I walk deeper into the room, toward the case, a scent rises. I stop before reaching the case, sniffing the air, trying to place it: a bit of tang, a bit of butter, a bit of vanilla.

The marble beneath my feet softens into dark earth. Wild stalks with ruby-red stems push through invisible cracks in the floor. Broad green leaves unfurl beside my shoes. Somewhere nearby, bees hum lazily. In the far corner, so faint I wonder if I’m inventing it, the outline of a stone tower shimmers like heat rising from pavement.

Fear slides away and my shoulders drop. Though I’ve never seen this place, I know it.

The light shining over the case seems to pulsate, drawing my attention again. With every step I take closer to the case, the room seems to shrink. Vines, flowers and that leafy fruit with the purple stalk slide back through the floor, leaving only the marble. The melody fades and only the neutral walls remain.

Rhubarb.

In the glass sits a rhubarb pie and a faded copy of Rapunzel–the original.

The first story I remember hearing, the one that captured my imagination, and left me dreaming at night.
The story that first told me there might be something out there other than what I could see.
The story that sparked the first ember of hope.

Rapunzel

You were both curious.
You were both creative – she sang; you turned everything into a story.
You were both dreamers who hoped for knights on horses.
You were both trapped.

She was rescued and left the tower.
You unearthed ways to survive within its walls.
She became a princess.
You were… almost a princess.

The longer I stand there, staring at the case, reading the plaque, the smaller the room becomes. It feels as though its clawing at the edges of my heart, pulling out stitches and leaving a gaping hole. One that pulses with an ache. A tender ache, one that isn’t wholly sad or happy but rather mixed together like the rhubarb was mixed with the butter and vanilla. My eye catches on the almost on the plaque. It was almost just a story; might have been just a story. Instead, it became a lifeline. I was almost a princess; might have been except the monster in my story shouted lies that bought him my silence.

The thought barely makes it through my mind when a door I hadn’t seen before clicks; opens on its own. The smell of rhubarb fades and the air releases its hold on me. Quietly–I do everything quietly–I step through the next door. There is no smell here. The marble feels firm beneath my feet. In fact, I don’t see anything at all here. No case. No plaque.

Until I sense a presence behind me.

I turn, my eyes scanning the room, my heart leaping into my throat.

There.

The case sits in the corner of the room, nearly hidden. My breath catches and, instead of just looking at this case, I put my hands on either side of it, as though I could reach in. Matthew sits inside. His curly red hair hidden beneath the faded yellow cap. The red-striped shirt and overalls have been on him for forty years; his skin that old kind of doll plastic common in the eighties. I would give anything to hold him. Memories spark like firecrackers–vivid, beautiful, brief. A room with a piano and a rounded piece of glass supported by crocheted ropes held me and Matthew. Sometimes I pretended he was my little boy. Sometimes I just pressed PLAY on the cassette player embedded into his back and listened to the stories he told. His eyes moved, his mouth moved. He laughed.

Matthew

You were both carried everywhere:
You tugged him around, listening to stories from his back
While you were put into cars and moved from town to town.

You were both lost.
Matthew was brought home.
You stayed still for more than a decade before going.
You were almost home.

The words on this plaque feel inadequate. It talks about being lost. I did lose Matthew; I did find him when I had my daughter and he became my daughters’. Yet a nagging sense of something missing haunts me. The room grows colder around me as I stare at the doll. It wasn’t losing Matthew that hurt me the most. I’ve lost many things. When my daughters were born, I was home. Surrounded by …. I gasp and tears blur my eyes as gooseflesh rises along my arms.

It’s not talking about a place. It’s what home means.

Playing with a doll. Running through a house dragging a curly haired doll after me.

And not only Matthew but playing in the gutter behind my grandparents’ house with my sister and imagining twigs were fishing poles.

Innocence. Safety. These are the things of home.

almost innocent.
almost safe.
almost home.

My lungs struggle to drag in air around the aching hole. From somewhere deep inside, a little girl stirs. She isn’t sad. She is remembered. I can almost see her bleach blonde hair, sky-blue eyes and a smile that featured a permanent gap between her two front teeth. She isn’t running through open fields or playing with flowers, though: she’s sitting in the darkened corner of my heart.

I could stay in this room for hours, just standing at the threshold of when an innocent girl was silenced and trapped. I’ll hold her. I see her. I’ll play or listen or talk or just stay. We can put the stories on repeat and make up new ones. The air feels warmer. And old as if it’s been suspended between breaths for forty years.

I notice the light above Matthew growing fainter and fainter. The ceiling seems to be closer to me than before. And, almost as though it were audible, I sense Matthew telling me to move. Still, the gap between Matthew and almost here hurts like a freshly earned bruise. The deepest longings always sting.

The air gets noticeably colder as I walk into the next room. Shivers race along my spine as I glance warily at the case. I see the red velvet pillow, the sparkle of a ring. The ring stares back at me and I can’t tell if it’s mocking, pitying or genuinely bereaved. Lines crease my forehead as I wrap my arms around myself, gingerly stepping closer.

Nine years is a long relationship. It’s a long time to be engaged to someone who didn’t hear you when you cried. It’s a long time to wait, hoping tomorrow love will be words in action instead of pretty nothings. Once upon a time there was a little girl who loved Rapunzel and dreamed of a prince who fell in love with her voice first. Once upon a time there was a little girl who fell in love with fictional men who noticed tiny changes in a woman’s body and responded with care. She clung to those fairy tales not because she really cared about passion. She clung to those fairy tales because she cared about being enough. The adult version of that little girl needed to believe men could be good.

And so she trusted him with her whole self.

And she waited.

Until waiting became the thing that threatened to break the rope tethering her trust.

A Diamond Ring

You thought love was measured by staying.
You mistook passion for being loved.
The ring fit your finger.
It never found a home.
You were almost chosen.

Being chosen after someone sees the rotten in you is the fairy tale. It’s not really knights running to the rescue. It’s not really passion. It’s not really anything other than someone who to whom your voice matters, to whom the things you say are treasured gifts. Being chosen means someone doesn’t want you to change – he wants you the way you are.

Standing in front of the ring, I do not feel sad.

Because not being chosen means I wasn’t tethered to a man who didn’t want me.

And sometimes that is the place where dreams truly grow.

I don’t spend long in this room. I don’t leave it because the walls start closing in or the already chilly temperature drops. Silence doesn’t push me forward as it has in the other rooms. Instead, I tire of looking at something pretending to be sparkly and start looking for the way out.

This door is different. It’s curved like a horseshoe and does not open on its own. My lips twitch with a smile as I stand in front of it. I do not know what’s on the other side, but I feel my heart galloping as my fingers curve around the handle. A gust of warm wind rushes into my face, blowing back strands of my hair. The smell of wildflowers and honey spill over the threshold covering me. It’s the heaviest scent there’s been. It’s not faint like the honeysuckle was in the beginning; this is something more. It washes over me and, as I step through the doorway, the marble floors roll with each step. My body rides each wave, rising higher as I put one foot forward and then sinking lower as the other follows.

A surprised laugh echoes around the room.

Only when I realize there’s nothing in the room does the laughter fade. The floors slowly still from the canter until I stand in the middle of the room, looking at bare walls, inhaling the scent of wildflowers and jasmine. My mind carries me back to high school and two horses I adored: Prince and Lady.

As their names float into my memory, the air breathes. An area of the wall darkens and words start appearing one by one. The wall in front of me starts to peel away from itself, revealing the glass case I hadn’t seen before. In it are two photographs: one of me and Prince, a white beauty I still miss some twenty-eight years later and the other of me and Lady, a wild beast who could rarely be caught and who no one wanted to ride. Except me.

My heart hurts with tenderness as I try to read the plaque through blurry eyes.

Free

You rode a horse named Lady who refused to be tamed.
You loved a horse named Prince who listened to your body.
You were thrown by the wildness.
You were drug upside down without a helmet.
And stood up to ask, “Can I get back on?”

Behind doors, you were held down.
Behind doors, you were broken into.
And so you were tamed.
you were almost free.

Lady was a legend.

That horse truly was wild. Sometimes they couldn’t catch her. I called ahead once to request her and, when I arrived, I was told, “We can’t catch her. Seriously – she’s somewhere over there. But you’ll love this guy” and he put me on Prince.

Prince was exceptional in every single way.

I moved my body left, he went left. I leaned back, he stopped. I didn’t have to tell Prince anything; he simply paid attention. I know it was training. I know that. But I was fifteen when I met him – I was in year ten of being sexually abused. No one listened to my body. I weighed maybe a hundred pounds because I wasn’t eating. My father said, wasting away, are you? I didn’t know what having my body listened to felt like. I didn’t know it was even possible. Once, we crested a hill and Prince knew it headed to the barn: he went from zero to a hundred in one point six seconds; I went flying. Prince stopped, looked over at me, headed back to me and only ran when Mark’s horse came galloping at full speed to my “rescue.” I asked to ride him again.

I stare at these images in this case of two horses and feel my whole body collapse as I realize: I was not scared of their strength. In fact, I reveled in it. Because it was strength that made me feel free. Free comes from the Old English and originally meant free from obligation. These horses didn’t need me to perform. All Prince needed was me to move before he would respond. Lady needed me to let her run. Their poundage wasn’t used to hurt me.

Sometimes, lying beneath a different weight, the kind that broke into my body, the kind that left bruises in places no one could see but me, I’d stare at the ceiling and pretend it was rolling hills and I was on Prince’s back. I wasn’t necessarily running away as much as I just running. Freedom could carry me.

Wind whispers through the room again; I feel it tickle my neck. The smell of wildflowers surrounds me. I look down expecting to see colorful flowers blooming from the marble, but I don’t. When I look back up, though, the glass and plaque are gone. The sound of horses’ hooves galloping starts faint but grows louder. It vibrates off the walls until the floor starts moving again, rising and falling to a soft rhythm, a walk. I step once, then again, and the floor responds, the rolls coming faster now. The wind picks up and the floors quickens. The door starts coming up faster than I can manage and I am sure I’m going to crash into it but, seconds before I do, it opens on its own, and the floor deposits me over the threshold. Muddy hoofprints track into the new room.

This room is quiet.

The kind of quiet that says things.

The kind of quiet that hurts.

I see it at once: the case and the plaque. They are tucked into the corner of the room.

Fear replaces freedom at once. I don’t yet know what’s in the case but the smell here is strong: Marlboro cigarettes, dust. Panic seizes me and I do not want to see what’s in the case. Terrified that I am not alone, I start looking for the door out. It’s unpretentious – just a wooden door, nothing remarkable about it.

Is it locked? The thought whispers through my mind and I race toward the door, ignoring the case and the plaque. The handle on the door is firebrand hot, making me jerk away. Determined, I try again, blisters welling against my palm as I pull. The door opens. Closing my eyes, I sigh, my shoulders dropping.

The heat of the room washes over me, burning me from the inside.

I know that heat.

It’s not warmth.

Shame.

Instead of leaving, my eyes slide toward the case; hesitantly, I step close enough to read the plaque.

The Tape

You braved the cold office
You shared with the interviewer, a stranger
Your most painful secret, the scary one
It was recorded, played for many.
You solicited signatures for a petition to stay safe
Gathered dozens, from both friend and stranger
They said ‘he’ll stay away,’ then granted his freedom
You were almost believed.

There isn’t much to say here. The sound of the cassette tape in the glass rewinding again and again unsettles me. How many times do we have to hear it before it’s true? I wait to hear my voice : the date tells me what’s on it. But it doesn’t come.

Whirr.

Click.

Whirr.

Click.

It’s rewinding and rewinding, but panic starts to squeeze the air from my lungs as I realize it’s not giving my words.

I needed to protect someone smaller than me, a baby girl who couldn’t ever be allowed near him. The only way to do that was to tell my mother. It is amazing what we are willing to do for others and not ourselves. I might have been tainted. I might have been all the things he said–but she wasn’t. And so–I told. Gave an interview to the detective and said what happened; it was recorded. I asked strangers working at Wendy’s and in Publix to sign a petition to keep him in jail. Having spent the last seven years in prison for drugs, he was supposed to be paroled and we were trying to prevent that from happening. I reached out to people to whom I hadn’t spoken in years and gathered nearly a hundred names. Presented that list to the parole board and they agreed to deny his release.

For nine months.

Until a judge overruled it and he was released.

Words aren’t just words. They are alive. Words like rape made this heat – the boiling kind, the firebrand kind, the blistering kind – melt me until I only wanted the same thing I’d always wanted: to disappear. Speaking truth and having someone overrule it feels like another violation.

So, I turned instead to the space where I would be heard.

Click.

Whirr.

Click.

Whirr.

The little girl hiding in the corner deep inside of me is restless, wary and scared; she looks towards the door, the one that burns us and we step toward it, walk through it, and do not look back.

The fear vanishes as fast as it came. The air changes again: this time it feels… fresh, like a meadow opening on a warm Spring day. It’s not cold in this room and it’s not scalding. Instead, it feels almost like our temperature–comfortable. Easy. There are no scents here; no sounds, either. Silence feels like home. My heart slows to a normal pace and I feel drawn to the case that stands in the back of the room. Books line selves within it.

The Stories

You wrote girls who hid
and girls who walked into the fire
You spun tales that wouldn’t look away
You fell asleep with the blue bic pen
and callouses on the side of your knuckles
A sanctuary built with characters and scenes
Designed to say the things you could not.
Yet always holding just enough back to stay safe
You were almost heard.

There are over a hundred and fifty books between the short stories, poetry, novels and young adult books. Of those only sixteen are published. The rest are in thousands of pages tucked away in totes and bins. If we laid out a timeline of my published work, you’d find they start nuclear and broaden each year. The Character was the one that opened the door to advocacy; it’s the first-person narration of a ten-year-old going through sexual abuse and the imaginary friend who helps her survive; Me, Forget Me Not and Holding Home were all stories focused on singular experience and answering the same question from different angles: what is abuse? What does it look like? By the time Taramul Viselor came along, the questions were much broader and focused on complicity, community, mental health’s part in abuse, genocide – and all the ways survivors are not heard.

You simply cannot know me without knowing my characters. They have been my friends, my confidants, my dream-holders for nearly forty years. Writing is oxygen; stories are breath.

I’ve poured my whole self into stories because they allow me to illustrate core pieces of who I am and what I’m curious about. I have come so, so far and writing has helped get me here.

And yet…

There are areas I can’t explore: what does it cost to heal? being a big one.

I stare at the case of books, seeing each of their characters parade through my mind. Ash and his stories—especially the Whistling Elephant and the falling star–hold pieces of my heart that no one can replace. Taya is so close I cannot reread her entire story cover to cover. Haven is about the little girl who hides. Suddenly, I hear something. At first, I’m not sure where it comes from until I hear it again. I gasp when, from beneath my feet, a vine pushes up through the marble. It’s a flower with a red center and a bulb that pulses. Whisperroots grow where truths have been buried. My knees quiver as I bend and touch the leafy part of the vine. It’s warm to the touch and I feel its heartbeat pushing against my hand. The sound of whispers grow stronger. Though I strain to make out the words, I can’t. And somehow – somehow I know. Just when that realization dawns on me, I look up to the case again in time to see the cover of Echoes beat against the pages like a drum.

This room holds me. Here, I can say the hard things. Here, I don’t have to be quiet. Here, I can remember the girl who loved Rapunzel and longed for her voice to be the thing others wanted. I can be someone Clayton or Maikel might have loved. I can ride the back of a horse through meadows and hide away in a cabin where I might not be found. I can’t disappoint anyone in this room. I can’t anger anyone. I can’t poison or hurt anyone.

I might stay forever.

Except — there’s a sound drawing my attention from the next one. From beneath the door, I see bright light spilling over into here. Laughter sounds like chimes and bells. With one more glance at the case, I open the next door. And am immediately blinded by the light. All the other rooms have been darkened, lit by warm scones and a single beam of light over the cases. This room is filled with light.

Light in a rainbow of colors.

The sound of water splashing and girlish laughter makes my heart lighten. The stories might hold me but they don’t allow me to feel this sense of … peace and lightness. My feet sink into the marble floors and the sound of rolling waves crashing on a shoreline comes from somewhere. Maybe I’m imagining it. But sand slips between my toes, leaving my footprints as I walk closer to the case.

Love balloons my heart as I stare back at the most precious faces I’ve ever seen: that of my girls.

Joy

You were fading like this museum
You were coming unglued at the seams
Wondering if you’d always be invisible
Wondering what the point of it all was.
Until life exploded in a burst of color
and flowers growing in concrete
Permission to play again – granted.
Still, another little girl hides deep within
And so – you almost let go.

Their names are Breathe and Alight.

Both verbs. Both actions. Because love isn’t just a word: it’s meant to be shown through actions. To breathe is to have life. To alight is to illuminate, set on fire. Together, these girls then mean an illuminated life. That is exactly what they have been to me. From the moment I knew I was pregnant, my whole universe shifted. I started eating again because the baby inside of me needed nourishment and that was more important than maintaining an illusion of control. I prayed specifically for Alight – she was a direct answer to a prayer. When they came into my world, I told about the abuse but I did more than that.

Sounds fill the room, echo against the walls. They’re singing. Glorious day – Alight. That’s Alight’s voice. Only four or five years ago. As if conjured up from nowhere, there she is. I gasp and run to her. I can’t touch her, she’s as wispy as smoke, but I see her as she was then. Holding a My Little Pony and singing Oh Glorious Day as if she wrote it. Before she’s finished the sound of something etching into the walls makes me turn my head.

My whole chest squeezes tight as I see things appearing on the walls. “We made a prayer room!” Breathe. That’s Breathe. She’s about twelve and there she is – standing inside the extra room in the house, the one we filled with prayers.

“Caterpillar in the tree, how I wonder who you’ll be…”

I started drawing outside the lines when they came. We deliberately splashed through mud puddles and baked bread from scratch because I wanted them to have a smell that might remind them of me when I’m not here. We went on adventures all over the city even though I had never cared for being outside. Outside was too big; I couldn’t control as much of it as I could tucked away at home. I overcame big fears because I didn’t want them to be me. Every waking moment was a moment to make a memory.

I believe life comes from God.

And He gave me them.

Proof, in my book, that He loves me. Even though He knows the broken Tiffini, the dirty Tiffini, the ashamed Tiffini.

Truly believing that someone loves you enough to make your greatest dream come true can be truly life-altering.

The smell of baking bread tickles my nose. Flour fights. The room shifts. It feels playful now as I see Alight and Breathe jumping from the bed into a pile of stuffed animals and laughing for no reason. Being their mama has given me a chance to play. When Breathe was five, I saw her running through the house and I thought, she could burn this house down and it would be an accident. She wouldn’t deserve rape. Even if I didn’t remember being innocent — biology says I had to have been four once. Five. I must have been innocent. And that made me challenge the idea that I had deserved it from the beginning.

And yet…

The little girl still sits in a darkened corner of my heart. I see her. She rarely moves and some days she’s very faint. But, when I am scared, overwhelmed or in a dangerous situation, she becomes crystal clear. And so – I advocate. I volunteer. I speak. I write. I do things that keep her centered. The gap here – between letting go and almost is both painful and also accepted. It is the cost of protection.

The laughter starts to fade. And something pulls me toward the door.

Something hitches my breathing, makes it faster.

When I turn to look behind me, the joy in the room is softer, quieter.

I open the door and step through, checking the marble to see if it’s steady. I barely step fully into the room when I hear a delighted squeal. The little girl running at me is in a pink dress some distant part of me remembers. I barely know what I’m doing when I drop to my knees, my arms closing around her. Something softens inside and tears blur the room. She smells of honeysuckle and rhubarb and horses. As I rise, I hold her hand in mine and step toward the open door.