I am sure we were meant to be friends, but you see, you came too late. In kindergarten, I was the awkward child trying to hold the classmates’ hands at recess. I mouthed their words along with them to feel those new words on my tongue like a new candy flavor.“Thank you,” I greeted. Red […]
We buried my mother twice because she didn’t want to stay under the ground. After the first try, I caught her looking over my shoulder while I cooked swordfish in her spicy tomato sauce. She pointed out each mistake, tut-tutting while maggots crawled in and out of her sunken cheeks. If my wife made an […]
When my mother was pregnant, she dreamed of a pig wallowing in shit. She was delighted; pigs symbolize wealth. Now I live in a basement apartment that stinks of sewer gas. Pregnancy dreams never lie, and sometimes I hate Heaven’s sense of humor.But I’m getting even. My father left me the gogok, tucked between the […]
Any town built on swampland is bound to sink.It will collapse into the layers of substrate and sediment from the pressures of time and space, and people stomping through their routines. Prefabricated houses, all askew, are weighed down with chipboard furniture assembled using finicky allen keys through blurry tears. You hope a new shelf might […]
The letter wasn’t the first thing my mother set on fire, but it was the first that burned a door inside me—a door I’d spend years trying to open again.Most nights it was just us: me, her, the TV. She’d hold my face too close, her breath sour-sweet with wine, and say, “I don’t need […]
The thing about big sisters is that we little sisters want to be them. We dress alike, we watch the same shows, we style our hair like them and try winged eyeliner before our time. Though we’re not chubby, we stop eating chips and ice cream because they are on a diet. They’re perfect the […]
Buy him a shirt: pale, pressed crisp, avoid a relaxed fit, get him something plain and ordinary like his face, not paisley, never stripes, definitely not checked because I’m no cowboy, Annie, certainly no pastels, definitely no glitter or sequins or tufted collars or feathers or fancy buttons or neon, or one shaped more like […]
Growing up, I think what plagued my mind endlessly was regret—regret about things I’ve said or done, things I should have said or done or wish I had. It was an endless cycle of reliving things past, and potential futures let go, over and over and over again each night, until these very thoughts either […]