The move has been taxing. It’s sad enough that I have to leave the house on St. George Street. But the fact that I have to move out with nowhere to go has made things worse. Soon, all of my worldly possessions will be packed away in a 10 x 10 ft. storage unit, and I will be homeless…
It’s June—a month that stretches like the song of cicadas—and every eighth-grade class in America has come to Washington DC. First stop: the museum where I work.
I plant my feet firmly on the marble floor and pause. “Be the rock in the stream,” I tell myself…
I’m doing laundry at a laundromat off Pico in LA. I’m wearing a shirt that reads Fuck Fur that looks like it was painted in blood. Another girl about my age comes in to do laundry. She is wearing a faded Batman tee…
It’s a muggy, East Coast September afternoon, and the pandemic is pummeling the US. The airport is a ghost town. I arrive two hours before my flight home to Colorado. I stroll through the rows of closed shops and restaurants just behind the TSA line; the eyes of my fellow masked travelers reflect my own uncertainty…
One February afternoon, my phone is stolen while I’m working in a cubicle at a local library. Using my laptop, I try to track the phone without success. I lock the phone remotely with the screen displaying contact information with the vague hope that the device will make it back to me.
About six months go by and I’ve accepted that the phone is gone for good. It’s a blistering summer day when my mom tells me that someone just called saying they have my phone and want to return it…
With about two hours to see Bhaktapur’s Durbar Square on my one day tour of Nepal’s Kathmandu Valley, I’m here to see the temple at Taumadhi Square; peruse genuine Newari pottery in Pottery Square; marvel at what’s left of a city nearly destroyed by a devastating earthquake less than a year ago.
My walk takes me past buildings standing precariously amid piles of rubble. Am I the only one who sees?…
A better name for “Infusion Room” would be “Last Chance Saloon” or “Get Chemo Here, Unlucky Ones!”
I’d rather be anywhere else, especially home with my wife and one-year-old son, whose black-brown eyes and dimpled grin are the only things that distract me. But I’m here, in the waiting room of a university medical center, preparing for my first of many infusions…
We are lost in paradise. This is our favorite place to be even if the buildings are different each time we return. There is something special about how the sun and sand in Mexico heal our wounds. We have been drifting apart lately. I cannot tell if he sees it but this is my last-ditch effort to save whatever is left of “us”…
My friend Rob enjoys music, and follows his favorite bands when he can, and I tag along from time to time. One time I go with him down to Cleveland’s west side. The Happy Dog band are loud and boisterous, so I am delighted when after the show Rob says “Let’s go back in time”.
My children color intently on the paper menus as I sip my coffee. My eyes lift and look around the restaurant. That’s when I see him. His white beard, suspenders, plaid shirt and glasses set him apart from the crowd. Our eyes meet and he smiles. I blush and look at my kids who are still unaware…
My alarm didn’t go off so I wake up late and I’m having one of those days where everything seems to go wrong. I spill on myself just as I’m about to leave and my train is delayed by 20 minutes just when I think I might make it to work on time. I look at my watch and do some quick math wondering how long it will take me to walk to work versus wait for the next train…
It’s one of those New York winter days where the Christmas decorations have all been taken down but spring still feels so distant you might have imagined the holiday. It’s bleak, gray and bone-chillingly cold. My partner is studying abroad the semester, so I am heading home to an empty apartment. It’s the end of a long week at work, and a commute that feels even longer. Each of the three trains I have to take has had some sort of delay. I just want to get home…
You’d think after ten months in Baltimore I’d know the timing of the bus system. But today, like so many before, finds me flailing wildly down the street in a vain attempt to catch what can’t be caught. The bus stop is only one block from my apartment, but I just miss it at least once a week.
I don’t know why I even bother with this farce…
His gravelly voice is drifting down the street, antagonistic and unafraid, as if inviting dispute. By the time I understand the few intelligible words mixed in between his sporadic yelling, it is too late to cross the street.
“They’re f****ing ruining this city! They run around at night and attack me! Targeting white people, but no one cares…
I love the view from the bridge. I always have. The sounds and the people fishing off the ledges. The way the wind engages my face like fingers on a piano to play a smile. The wind seems to know the right nerves to touch when humans forget. Even if the smile is false, it feels good to pretend. I decide that legs should touch the railing. I climb. One foot then leg swinging like a pendulum over the edge, I move with intention…
I make my way to the restaurant and get a table for one, jostling my way through the busy chaos of Times Square. It’s somewhat strange, being surrounded by people yet being completely alone. The ache of loneliness and anxiety rise up in me as I stare down the barrel of another night with only my thoughts for company…
“Is anyone sitting here?” he asks.
“No. Go ahead.”
I move my purse that I had placed there carelessly, not to intentionally ward off strangers.
I am distracted watching Steve Wilkos on the TV. No volume, just closed-caption, which lags, so I practice my lip-reading skills and test my accuracy with the captions that come a second later.
“Are you Korean?” the man asks in Korean.
“I am,” I reply in Korean, “but my Korean isn’t very good…”
I am one of the parents chaperoning my twin daughters’ second-grade field trip to the science department of a nearby college. Staff usher us into an expansive room where strange, and interesting artifacts and skeletons don the surfaces and walls. Children are directed to sit on the floor along the long walls that are interspersed with a few chairs for the adults. After we get settled, I watch with interest as other groups file in and do the same.
How many groups can this hold? I wonder…
An actor, a rabbi, and a young woman sit in a room waiting to hear whether they can move forward. A true story.
Let’s backtrack: On my way to thirty, minding my own damn business, focused on career and other items of levity (insert laugh here), I am diagnosed with cancer: Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. A young person’s cancer, my oncologist says. Well, that's insider knowledge. In a blink, daily life changes: The week begins on Friday with chemo, Saturdays are spent nauseous – shuffling between toilet and bed, long hair is cut short, then boyfriend shaves it all off, mum moves cross country to take care of me, career fantasies recede as I contemplate mortality…
I’m a 15 year old American girl—made of pure angst, quick vexation, and deeply entrenched embarrassment for my general existence—and I am in France with my family. We’ve traveled to Lourdes, a stunning spot at the bottom of the French Pyrenees. It is home to a holy site, the origin of a spring said to have been brought forth for St. Bernadette by an apparition of the Virgin Mary. Pilgrims from around the world come to bathe in these purportedly healing waters, and now we number among them…