Former Career Fire and EMS Lieutenant-Specialist, Writer, and Master Photographer.
Author: Emily Slatin
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“Being a queer girl isn’t something you decide. It’s something you survive, until you get old enough to claim it.”—Emily Pratt Slatin There are days—quiet, ordinary, well-behaved days—when everything is working just as it should. But somewhere in the periphery, somewhere behind the steady cadence of utility and discipline, something far more primitive stirs: the…
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There were so many moments in my life when I had to say exactly the right thing—or someone was going to die. That’s not a metaphor. I’ve stood on rooftops with jumpers, my voice the last thread keeping them tethered to this world. I’ve told parents their children weren’t coming back. I’ve negotiated with men…
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In the fall of 1998, I left New York and dropped straight into the Bible Belt. Rural West Virginia. A small college town where the air on Sunday morning was thick with hymns and everyone’s front porch had a flag—either American, Christian, or Confederate, depending on how honest they were. I was nineteen. A lesbian.…
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I went down to the river today because I needed to remember who I am. Not the version people expect. Not the one who always has the answer or the fuse already lit. Just me. Alone with the trees and the current and the kind of silence you can’t get when other people are around…
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I sent a simple email to my neighbors. Just a courteous heads-up that I’d have a few friends visiting the farm overnight. In a rural stretch of Vermont, where each house is a good tractor’s ride away, it felt right to let them know about the extra car in my drive and the voices that…
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This afternoon, the breeze rolled in like it had somewhere to be. I sat on the porch and let it comb through my hair like the fingers of someone who knows better than to ask questions. It’s sticky out—just enough to remind me it’s June—but I’d still take this over air conditioning. I want to feel the…
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The air is cool and heavy with the scent of pine. Through my open window I hear the wind whispering in the branches—a gentle hush that carries me back to the first woods I ever loved. I remember being a little girl at summer camp, sitting cross-legged by the fading campfire on the final night.…
