My mother pressed her cheek to Leslie’s cold face and cried. She rocked back and forth, holding my sister’s limp body close to hers. And those Congolese women r...
In his place is a little girl with ragged clothes and a dirty face. She has my blue eyes and a cowlick that sits above the peak of her forehead. It has been a l...
That was all I needed to hear. I pushed aside the images of what had happened: their taunting faces, my bruises and twisted glasses, the leaves in my torn under...
How does one find self-worth standing before the evidence of broken dreams, unrealized potential, and past mistakes? This is what plagued me as I stared at the ...
I’m not sure if my mistake was in joining together reality and fantasy or if I simply was treading someplace where I didn’t belong.
Gradually Mother’s cooking faded, along with her tan. No longer in the kitchen when I rushed home from school, she’d be lounging on the cushions of our faux vel...
When I was slim, I communicated with my whole body in large, confident gestures; I enjoyed being front and center. But I’m no longer thin. To deal with difficul...
His quiet Southern lilt didn’t match what he was saying. There should have been magnolia petals falling out of his mouth or some exhaustive yarn about his mothe...
Sometimes you lie so much you begin to believe what you say. Sometimes you don’t even have to say the lies out loud to believe them.
I was in the kind of love that puts a rock in your heart and stuffs your eyes with cotton, but you hold that rock and that cotton. Because that’s all you’ve got...
It wouldn’t be the last time I tried to cure a broken heart with recklessness.
Redacted Relationship By Keith Hoerner
She needed to know more about where I began: my past as a refugee child.
I’d talked with firefighters about extension — how a fire spreads — all the while constructing, mentally rehearsing and refining an elaborate plan for my own de...
The house had other guests too. They were invisible in daylight...
