At the Halloween bash in the school gym, all the chaperones made Rachel and Val pose for pictures in their ripped flannels and jeans and boots, their hair wild, teased with a comb and hair sprayed.
January 21, 2021
She is my youngest. Her older brother makes his way closer to home. Unknown to them both is the sibling they never met. The middle child. The child lost to miscarriage at fourteen weeks.
January 19, 2021
She’d been warned countless times about the dangers of hitchhiking, but she’d never had any trouble on the road, and liked thumbing rides.
January 15, 2021
What’s more, I resisted the truth about my own body—its inherent greatness—because acknowledging it would have required a shift: I’d have to start caring for myself the way it cared for me.
January 14, 2021
I’m ashamed to admit this, but rather than go to a place of empathy or outrage over his negligent upbringing, my mind goes instead to a place of curiosity.
January 13, 2021
“What’s that?” is my placeholder for, “Can you repeat that, please? I am hard of hearing and I don’t have my hearing aids in because I am ashamed of my hearing loss.”
January 10, 2021
His first hit, the song he was known for, was told through the eyes of a little boy whose father drove a truck “steering big wheels of sadness” for days at a time. A tear jerker in the best country tradition, with mandatory slide guitar wail.
January 8, 2021
She didn’t want any of this anymore. She didn’t want Charlotte and Melissa, Lotti and Issa. She didn’t want the “escape” from real life that was no longer working.
January 1, 2021
Turn into the slide.
It’s the first thing you learn about driving on ice.
The last time I wore the delicate, bodice hugging, demure yet inviting black dress was four years ago, almost to the day: August 29, 2016; the day my brother eulogized his youngest daughter, in his backyard.
December 30, 2020
By Loreen Lilyn Lee If you live with people, sheltering in place has its challenges, but lack of human…
December 29, 2020
I didn’t know what a psychotic break was or whether the doctor in Pittsburgh was right or wrong about me. All I really wanted was for him to help me figure out whether people were really out to ruin my career or whether I just needed to study harder.
December 28, 2020
Through the hidden side of the temple, I opened a sacred door into my soul today. I had not known why I came to Japan but at this instant, I get the hint that I am here to attempt to heal my bruised soul and to learn to remember the joy of waking up in the morning.
December 27, 2020
Under my skin, I sense an urge to mobilize into action, to complete something. To get out of this skin, this relationship, this home, this womb. Anniversaries of any kind can evoke plenty.
December 26, 2020