childhood

For a short period of time in my teenage years, my mind blocked out memories made within a nine-to-12-month period. I was unable to recall a hospitalization, a car crash, or what author John Green calls “the night feeling” in his collection The Anthropocene Reviewed — an overwhelming sense of dread that flooded my mind and body until I awoke the next morning.

Andrea Leeb, nurse-turned-lawyer-turned-writer, tells her story of child sexual abuse and perseverance in her memoir Such a Pretty Picture. I sat down, albeit virtually,...

Dear Andrea Leeb, “There’s a part of me that wonders if I’ve made it all up,” I said to my therapist this past winter. In...

At the Grave I'd have said the reason I went was to see if their names were spelled correctly on the stone. I approached, flinching...

Day #78 The scouts are rowdy again as they parade to the pool. They skip in circles around me and make a game out of who can...

Letter From the Edge of Every Known Thing Dear Ginkgo, are we so different? You at the edge of undress—I, undone, unkempt, infant at my...

B is for Bird My parents must have knownthree hatchlings in the nestblown from our maple treewouldn’t survive. But they gave us an eye dropper and...

Pulling air into a tight vortex spins into a poem, readymade. I knew nothing of how poems came to be, so willed them. Like waterspouts, they twirled...

The Newborn Barely 5 lbs 8 oz, she sleeps before me and snores through her half-open mouth. She clenches her tiny palms. Tight chest, fisted heart; tight tight— sweat trickles down her cotton onesie. She...

Candy Crane My brother Joshua lost interest in Walmart's toy crane at eight, shortly after he gained enough hand-eye coordination to manipulate the metal claw....