Bad things seem to happen to Megan Thee Stallion right before big things do. This week, someone reportedly robbed her Los Angeles home days ahead of her appearance on Saturday Night Live, where she became the second female rapper to pull double duty as host and musical guest. Last night, she put that incident to the side and strutted out on the SNL stage in a sheer dress and black corset, prepared to be herself.

for christina yuna lee i am patient
as the mace in my hand.
on my way to some party
at which i will burst into brilliant laughter
while a friend poses in my fur,
rain stabs the roofs,
every step around me the sound
of daggers.
the small god on my wrist clacks
against the wine bottle under my arm—
last year, when we bought mace en masse,
i made an altar of my grandmother.
tonight, chrystie street is dripping
in the same prayer.
the rain urgent. an ambulance
a cry.

This article was originally published in Undark Magazine.Ten years ago, 12-year-old Rory Staunton dove for a ball in gym class and scraped his arm. He woke up the next day with a 104-degree Fahrenheit fever, so his parents took him to the pediatrician and eventually the emergency room. It was just the stomach flu, they were told. Three days later, Rory died of sepsis after bacteria from the scrape infiltrated his blood and triggered organ failure.

Every second of every day, oxygen-rich blood is coursing through your brain. Your heart pumps it up through your chest and neck, along tinier and tinier arterial tubes, twisting and turning among the grooves and lobes of gray matter until it reaches the brain cells it’s meant to nourish. But this journey can be interrupted. An artery can get clogged—often by a free-floating, gelatinous clot—which halts the flow of blood. The clog will starve your brain’s cells of oxygen.

​​At eight o’clock one Saturday morning, six giants appeared in front of the building where I live, propped open the front door, and started heaving a thickly swaddled 1930 Steinway Model L grand piano up the narrow switchbacks to the fourth floor.If these stairs give out, I thought—not a distant possibility—I’ll have blood on my hands.