My mother’s house looks like my long-repressed childhood memories. The black floral wallpaper is veiled with dust, cloaking walls yellowed by years of chain- smoked cigarettes. Everything decorative is dangerous: swords hang in place of picture frames, flanked by ominous leather ropes of unknown origin. My mother’s house feels like a castle, but one where […] More »

“The trust is, of course, that there is no journey. We are arriving and departing all at the same  time.” —David Bowie   The Parisian night sky is charcoal grey. Fog rises from the Seine like a lonely apparition and is swept away by the glare of Notre-Dame Cathedral’s lights. At Point Zero, the famous […] More »

Illustration by Ashley Wong As I open the bag of mycelium, a pleasant creamy smell wafts through the air. I break off a piece and feel the smooth pores between my fingers. It’s like grazing the soft hand of a long-lost grandparent. Around 1.1 billion years ago, the animal and fungi kingdoms split from plants […] More »

Illustration by Francois Vigneault I’m at a party trying to join in a conversation with some men who are older than me, around their mid-thirties to forties. The conversation topics are bachelor parties, home ownership, and sports. I contribute maybe 10 sentences the whole night. At the end of the evening, I figure this needs […] More »

Illustration by Paterson Hodgson At nine years old I was an under-the-covers reader. Even on nights when my parents were distracted by their cassette tapes and homemade wine, I wouldn’t risk turning on my bedside lamp after 8:30 p.m. Maybe my parents knew I was deep into the world of Nancy Drew or Encyclopedia Brown […] More »

Illustration by Michelle Simpson I’ve been a high school teacher for 16 years now. That means I’ve spent roughly half my life in high school something I’d never have predicted as a teenager. All I wanted then was to get the hell out. I was a fat teen in the 1990s, when “heroin chic” was […] More »

Photo by ISTOCK/YNGSA The thought only seems to come in the mirror. It plays out staccato, like a chess game, tennis match, sword fight. It’s helping. No, it’s not. It could be. It’s obviously not helping. Look, the spot there, a bit back from the front, to the left—no, the right—it’s barer than before. OK. […] More »

Illustration by Diana Bolton Family has always been complicated for me. My father left when I was three, and by the time I was 10 he had disappeared completely. I left home at 16 and struggled to obtain housing, briefly finding stability in a group home. I moved on to various households with my siblings, […] More »

Illustration by Jaden Tsan “It’s not like you even act that Asian”—these words were spoken to me by a white now-ex-boyfriend of mine during a casual conversation. At the time, I let it go because I was not sure how I felt about it, but the words have stuck with me. How exactly am I […] More »

Illustration by Brintha Koneshachandra Dear Mom, The other day, I was making us breakfast and I reached into the fridge to grab the container of yogurt to eat with our puri. Now, you would think, having done essentially this every weekend of my entire life, I would not screech, “Ugh! Mom, where is the yogurt?! […] More »

Illustration by Julia Galotta I’m a young woman, who can, to my knowledge, get pregnant and has long-held dreams of being a mother. When I was a child, I spent my days dutifully caring for my dolls—who were named Baby and Popstar. When I turned 13, I started babysitting the two toddlers who lived next […] More »