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Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Eating Free
Perhaps this isn’t the case at all Embassy Suites, but in Flagstaff, Arizona, between 5 and 7 pm, the hotel provides unlimited snacks and beer, gratis. I’ll repeat that: unlimited. Granted, I never imbibed more than three Michelobs and a cubic yard of Chex mix, but still. The possibility of unlimited is delectable.
March 2026
Expats
Rhonda tended to take in people—and cats, Jessica said. Spending about $150 of her monthly Social Security check on cat food, in addition to supporting her meth habit, had left her broke most of the time.
March 2026
Unruly
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.
February 2026
The Dead of Dream Town
As the majority population of Dream Town, the dead hold all elective offices. They determine the hours of the municipal pool. (Midnight swimming!) They program traffic lights to operate on peculiar patterns: Some never turn red. Others never turn green.
February 2026
Sleeping Children
What was happening in and to Gaza was not really about democracy at all—or any kind of universal, God-given values. It was simply about power.
February 2026
The Danish
Then I felt a small admiration for the Man With The Danish, who hoped to give away excess food rather than throw it in the trash. Maybe I should have accepted the Danish, although I didn’t want it. By turning it down resentfully, I might have discouraged him from ever offering food to a stranger again. But there’s no time to think when someone thrusts a sudden dessert in your face.
January 2026
The Body Eats
I want to keep eating. I want life. More life. I want to turn from the simple facts of my existence to consider bigger mysteries, to fret about what might be, to remember what is no more. I want to imagine something other than this food in front of me, already a commodity on some assembly line, moving away from me.
January 2026
Waterfall
Sex, to me, was like a solvent, cutting through layers of everyday grime. Without it, irritations accumulated with no way of wiping the slate clean; disappointment coagulated into distress. I felt forlorn, restless, and disconnected. Yet no matter how many times I sounded the alarm, my husband never seemed to hear me.
January 2026
Bad Lunch
I’d come to think of being a chef on a yacht as a kind of psycho-spiritual quest, like Homer’s Odyssey, only instead of tumultuous seas and six-headed monsters, our challenges were wealthy clients who arrived by private jet with Louis Vuitton purses on their arms.
January 2026
The Children's Wing
Other parents see our little girl running up and down the hall, or performing a dance in the playroom, or climbing onto a stool to get the Funny Bunny game from the closet, and they ask why we are here. I have told the story so many times to so many different doctors that I’m beginning to wonder if I’m keeping the details straight. Was it four in the morning or six? What woke us—the trembling and shaking, or the lack of breathing, or the choking sounds?
December 2025
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