Adolescence

The Empty Room Inside Each of Us

Sun, 31 May 2026 15:00:00 -0400

Crumb is always right, always the one telling the story, always the one who turns the drab, lonesome plains they call home into a world that’s dramatic and necessary.

Formed Otherwise

Sun, 31 May 2026 15:00:00 -0400

There’s a presumption that to raise a child with disabilities makes you brave. I wasn’t brave. I wasn’t always a stellar mother, either. But I studied my daughter as if she were an ancient text to see what was beneath the chatter and the rage

Milk

Sun, 31 May 2026 11:00:00 -0400

Pumped for an infant, spilled at the dinner table, used as a tear gas antidote

Practicing

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 11:00:00 -0400

Taking piano lessons, learning to speak Russian, seeking enlightenment

Separation

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 11:00:00 -0400

There is a dead snake on the cracked road. My son says it’s not a dead snake. He says the snake has just shed its skin and left it there.

Rise

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 11:00:00 -0400

I wasn’t about to tell Simon what happened. Buddy Sikes was one of the popular kids. Simon wouldn’t understand. Not because of his differences, but because he was still at the age where a clear line separated right from wrong.

Bars

Tue, 31 Mar 2026 10:00:00 -0400

On a playground, at a gymnastics meet, over an apartment window

Pockets

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 12:00:00 -0500

Shoplifting cigarettes, running the pool table, creating a “pocket prairie”

Nicknames

Sat, 31 Jan 2026 12:00:00 -0500

Get to know Boxcar Betty, Stick Dick, Lali, and the Cajun Asian

I Got You

Sat, 31 Jan 2026 12:00:00 -0500

“I’m your brother,” the man says, then swallows. He is tall and burly with deep-set blue eyes and thinning hair. He wipes his nose on his flannel sleeve and forks some coleslaw from a plastic container.

Unruly

Sat, 31 Jan 2026 12:00:00 -0500

I’m rebellious, defiant, so I’m sent to the barn, driven there by my newly single mom, or my newly single dad, or my grandparents, or someone else. Another parent told my mom I should try horseback riding. Ice-skating and tae kwon do and ceramics didn’t stick, but I can already tell I’m a horse girl.

Celebrating

Sun, 30 Nov 2025 11:00:00 -0500

A fiftieth anniversary in Paris, a COVID Christmas in April, a first birthday in America

About That Time I Pushed a Car Uphill

Tue, 30 Sep 2025 12:00:00 -0400

I want to pause here and point out the obvious: According to the laws of physics, as soon as Darius put the car in neutral, it would begin to roll back. With me behind it.

Thread

Tue, 30 Sep 2025 12:00:00 -0400

So, all right then: What was it like to be transformed into what I am now? I’ll tell you. It was like a sundering. A splitting. Icy lightning cleaved along my limbs. At the same time, my skin was turning fruit-rind tough, dully reflective like obsidian, and punctured by small hairs the size and strength of claws.

A Thousand Words

Tue, 30 Sep 2025 12:00:00 -0400

A Thousand Words features photography so rich with narrative that it tells a story all on its own.

Getting Dressed

Sun, 31 Aug 2025 12:00:00 -0400

Sleeping in uniform, layering against the cold, wearing your spouse’s jeans

Mad to Live

Sun, 31 Aug 2025 12:00:00 -0400

When my children began to tattoo their skin, / even modest images scared me. / I winced at each new embellishment, / wishing them innocence, not scars.

Manicure

Thu, 31 Jul 2025 12:00:00 -0400

What remains of their visit is memory, residue, / trickles of sand from our trip to the beach. / I confess, I like my bedazzled talons . . .

Complexion

Mon, 30 Jun 2025 12:00:00 -0400

A prominent birthmark, an elaborate skin-care regimen, a secret ancestry

Shimmer

Fri, 20 Jun 2025 07:00:21 -0400

James Hugo’s short essay “Shimmer” is a portrait of two small creatures whose size belies their strength. One is an Anna’s hummingbird, a “little knuckle of feather and muscle,” waiting in the rain to be fed. The other is the author’s son’s best friend, a boy whose spirit has survived a painful home life.

Ode to Middle School Band

Fri, 30 May 2025 12:00:50 -0400

All shuffle into this stuffy / school gym to behold / the clumsy miracle of hands— / where to put them, how, when.

Hometown Heroes

Fri, 30 May 2025 12:00:00 -0400

“White people have it so good, they sign up to die in another country,” she said.

I thought that was pretty grim. I mean, there are such things as heroes. But it’s hard to imagine a real war with people who look like Jack and Matty. The only war I ever hear about is the one my mom was born into and grew up in the aftermath of, the Korean War. The one she uses every excuse to squeeze into a conversation. Every chance she gets, she tells me how rough it was then and how much better we have it now.

Collectors

Fri, 30 May 2025 12:00:00 -0400

For years I’ve hauled my own records from house to house, city to city, relationship to relationship. They’ve outlasted two marriages. They’ve outlasted my father. They’ve outlasted pets and therapists. I’ve got a few rare 45s and some treasured signed Smiths albums, but also twelve-inch singles that are warped or skip. I’ve often thought about getting rid of all of them. Like nearly everyone else, I get most of my music from an app these days. But I’ve kept them the way I’ve kept a few good friends. All of us collectors. All of us records of everything that’s been pressed into us over time.

All Night

Wed, 30 Apr 2025 12:00:00 -0400

A 24-hour diner, a hospital late shift, a conversation you don’t want to end

Roots and Rhizomes

Thu, 24 Apr 2025 13:10:50 -0400

Zombie Mom

Mon, 31 Mar 2025 12:00:00 -0400

Denise figured the mom was dead; she had to be. The dad did the shopping now, and unless the mom was traveling for work for, like, a month or something, it was the only explanation.

Point of fact: Just last month the daughter and the mom had been talking while checking out at Denise’s register, and the daughter had asked for Lunchables, and the mom had said, “You will eat those over my dead body.”

Now the dad was buying five of them a week.

T-Shirts

Mon, 31 Mar 2025 12:00:00 -0400

Poorly—and purposefully—placed slogans, baby-goat encounters, and uncanny AOL connections

Thievery

Mon, 31 Mar 2025 12:00:00 -0400

I was sure I'd heard our front gate squeal and rattle. We live on a tree-lined Chicago street where 6 AM on Sunday is the time for arriving home from the night shift or heading out to the early shift or, in the case of a very few early risers, walking a dog.

Chores

Fri, 28 Feb 2025 12:00:00 -0500

On a solo backpacking trip, in a desert military base, at a church revival

Ditch

Fri, 28 Feb 2025 12:00:00 -0500

This is the part of the story where someone tells me, You couldn’t save him. He had to save himself. Every time I hear something like that, I want to scream.