I am nineteen and newly arrived in Manhattan to become a writer.
I am nineteen and newly arrived in Manhattan to become a writer.
My mother’s eyes open as I enter the room with Dunkin’ coffee, a blueberry cake donut, and two daisies.
At the theme park, the skies broke open.
The therapist holds back tears as I describe the summer my anorexia started.
I arrive at the café’s toilet door exactly at the same moment as the lady who had smiled at me earlier.
Ignoring shouts, I scroll his profile for conversation starters.
We’re free, free, free, with overgrown feathered bangs, hand-me-down tees on matchstick frames, sucking down raspberry Slurpees on steaming sidewalks . . .
what i actually am is foster-turned-adoptive parent.
The babies sit aligned in rows.
Saturday, September 7, 1968, 8:55, five minutes to my blind date.
When my first husband was bed-bound and nearing his last days, I made him a sweetened buttermilk cream dessert.
We sat on the balcony, my parents and I.
We had all become such fast friends.
She can't find the credit cards she hid in our house from would-be thieves when we went away.
Bags are unloaded from the trunk and I look on with trepidation.
Out on the salt flats, I imagine being at the bottom of whatever sea was once here, megalodon and ribbons of sea grass above.
My family silently bumps along the road toward an African village we’ve never heard of.
Pushing through those glass doors of Arcade-O-Mania, the darkness swallowed me whole—but I wasn't afraid.
Off-campus party junior year. Tequila: salt, shot, lime.
My grandmother wrapped my thumb with a piece of thread, the tip of my finger growing redder with each turn of the fiber.