Bug makes another appearance in the funhouse mirror of the second story bathroom atop a hill in Bonnie Wenk Park. Wild hair splayed out around her face, framing the wide tortoise glasses more than anything. “You look like a writer,” that’s what he told me almost a year ago now. I felt like one, then. Having just barely turned in the beast of a computer I was so sure I’d write my manifest destiny on back to the woman who brought Bug out in the first place. She tried to squash the storyteller in me. Bug wasn’t ready to be born, to fly. Neither was I. But I wasn’t sure I had wings before I took the leap off of my safe brick wall the first time. I was never sure. In Helen’s mirror, I looked deformed. A pupal state of becoming, the butterfly I birthed always flitting around me, beckoning me: “Come play with me, mama.” Children crossing says the ice cream van that plays When the Saints Go Marching In. I drank pink Recess on a rather blustery day. “I feel full of magnesium!” I shouted into the wind. We found an uncanny valley Tweety bird popsicle Croc jibbit on the ground by the zip line. So much of this place reminds me of Portland—if only at the place where Pops and Pockets leave their legacy puzzle pieces. Girls in double French braids cry and look like ghosts of that time to me. The whole of it sounds like pain, feels like pain. But a goddess once said to me, “Pain is the price we pay for joy.” And despite the fact I was the only one in the room crying. Despite the fact I was the only one left shouting into a void... I knew all along something beautiful was being birthed. Again.