Reading <i>Dirty River</i> is being choked up, always. An attempt to maintain even breathing. If not, dry-heaving will inevitably occur. What is it with profs in my department who assign gut-wrenching readings? Don't they know that half of these texts are read on public transit? Do they want to make their students cry on the bus, squinting away from the false spring sunlight? I don't want to say 'raw'. I want to say, abrasion. A grasped-at throat gripped tight. I've begged to be choked enough times; I know what I mean when I say such things. That dry lung-heave. Wondering if I'll lose that lock that I've been trying to swallow since. The subheadings. Abrupt shifts from prose to verse. There is a lack of cohesion, of a linear narrative, but life as such is not cohesive. Narrative is always what we make of it, and all that. The Author in the beginning promised a non-traditional abuse story. No clear journey from point A to B to C. Instead, a physical journey here, a promising revolution there. Moments of repulsion. A renewed and sustained inability to look away. Somewhat irrelevant: felt odd that she only brought up being a Taurus near the end. It means nothing to the world at large but I, a Taurus, would have enjoyed that tiny bit of fact, that further point of collusion. But then, with it being so late in the memoir, it feels contrived.