The opening sentence of Milk Blood Heat provokes an association between femaleness and violence with alarming ease.

“Pink is the color for girls,” Kiera says, so she and Ava cut their palms and let their blood drip into a shallow bowl filled with milk, watching the color spread slowly on the surface, small red flowers blooming. (Pg. 1)

Author Dantiel W. Moniz chooses words as if she is holding your face in her hands while staring into your eyes with an unrelenting intimacy. 

By page two, a character announces that she is, “obsessed with duality.” That is about all you need to know as you dive into this collection of stories.

Before thirteen, she hadn’t realized empty was a thing you could carry. But who put it there? Sometimes she wonders if she will ever be rid of it, and other times she never wanted to give it back. It is a thing she owns. (Pg. 4)

I could not put this book down. I read it in one sitting and then returned to read it again, story by story. 

The way Moniz weaves thoughts with experiences feels like a tapestry of personal memories. She is so specific that you somehow see yourself in her world as if you are living it with her.

There is this raw but illusive relationship between body and mind that Moniz layers into every moment. Her stories are actively visual and simultaneously internal. 

Her characters feel like they are breathing in the room with you. I found myself wishing my way into the stories—wanting to be present in the room with her characters so as to not miss a single moment of their exposed humanity. 

Moniz proves that poetry lives on the edge of efficiency. Her sharp honesty cuts through a noisy mind and a foggy world. 

I find that every once in a while someone I encounter says something that feels totally exposed and out of place. In the recognition of these fleeting moments, my subconscious grabs on and whispers—there is a hidden complexity this person is withholding. Dantiel W. Moniz opens all of the wounds, opens all of the wonderful, and invites you into the shared experience of all of the “fierce weirdness.”