To my friends, I tell the story as a joke. If Sarafina comes up in conversation, she — who bought me a beautiful pink tutu when I was nine and gave me beads and...
*Featured Art: A TEAR by Carolyn Schlam, Ink and Watercolor, 14″ x 11″, 2020 I am lying on the Murphy bed in Herb’s dark living room, having finall...
This was 1972 and gay sex was definitely taboo. Not only was it against the law, the president of the university, a rabid segregationist, also hated queers. He ...
He was disheveled and smelled like cooked grease and cigarettes. It was an odor I associated with his being poor and hemmed in. There was so much about our life...
Dr. Joy is the best therapist ever. She acknowledges my feelings around generational trauma and my fractured relationship with my Korean Tiger Mom.
The altar is a yellow pine table, an unadorned platform for the laying out of grief and slivers of hope. It befits the geography of these mountains. It’s mess...
The Museum of Past Grievances by Jax Peters Lowell Featured Image: “In de maneschijn” by Martine Mooijenkind My beloved won’t answer the phone. He’s...
*Featured Artwork: “How Grey Was My Garden” by Elizabeth Cassidy I Easter Dresses Every Easter Mother made us matching tulle dresses with layers of ...
My father called me names, made me cry, and one time even threw my plate of Easter frittata at the wall because he said I was being fresh. But he was the best n...
Such can be the power of a teacher’s words. I was certain that all my Gen Ed students had their own Miss Laughlin who turned them off to the joys of reading and...
I don’t have a mom who fell in love how I was able to fall in love. My mother is a survivor in a way most Americans won’t ever understand. I am honored to be th...
I try to cool the heat in my cheeks that her sarcastic “wise, rich daughter” comment brings on. Her walker embarrasses me, too – unsightly, attention-seeking, d...
I am lazy, fat, asinine, stupid. I still feel his red hot anger, the spit on my face, and the insults flying toward me. The feelings and labels remain, despite ...
It was only a matter of time before one of us was going to break down and scream, beat our fists against the van’s upholstery in disbelief and frustration.
No longer does he even want conversation. He’s in a hurry, wanting only one thing. He wants me as convenient as a drive-through. I sleep with him because I don’...
Thoreau went to the woods to live deliberately, an elemental life not “frittered away by detail.” He wrote about the essentials of life, “I do believe in simpli...
There were my mother’s stories, and there were my books. Books were imaginary but some books could be true; Betty’s stories were neither true nor not-true, they...
Her admission that her diagnosis was terrible news showed a vulnerability in her I had never before witnessed. I had believed that nothing ever weighed on her,...
Right in the middle of some everyday activity, I’m overtaken by a sense of joy, peace, or contentment. The window often closes up just as quickly as it has ope...
In a second union, things you took for granted during those years with your first spouse float in your unconscious like twigs along a clear or muddied stream, o...
