Looking back at old photos, I don’t know how nobody noticed that something was wrong sooner. Before I knew the word, celiac weaved its way through every aspect of my life. I see a smiling little girl,...
In mock trial, each participant in a trial has a short introduction, where they get up from their seats and proudly announce their full names. I would watch my peers stand up, projecting surnames of “SEE-kree”...
Dear Irene (the GOAT),
Valentine’s Day is coming up, and I don’t have anyone to celebrate it with! All my friends are cuffed up, in talking stages and high-school-married. I’ve been single my...
Words fumbled out of my mouth in a blur, each one coming faster and faster like I was trying to outrun my own thoughts. My hands tensed and became clammy, and I felt the eyes of the classmates around me...
The smell of burning incense, lavishly decorated dishes and a living room filled with silent prayers — these were the things that made up my childhood, my culture, my family. Yet for the longest time,...
Warm water poured over my head in the sink of a small motel in Vermillion, South Dakota. My mom rinsed suds from the smooth sleeves of hair streaking across my forehead. She sang lullabies to me while...
On lazy Saturdays in fifth grade, I spent entire afternoons outside exploring the neighborhood and digging around my garden. At that age, freedom from responsibility meant that I had a seemingly infinite...
My bookshelf is my art gallery; every time I pass by, I am transported to the Louvre in Paris.
Each book on my bookshelf is a piece of art that I can pull out and appreciate. Be it feeling the deckled...
“What do you want to be when you grow up?”
“Where do you see yourself in 10 years?”
These were questions that had been posed to me on numerous occasions, yet my response was the same every...
I thought I wanted to be a romantic — or even a communist — after indulging in the passionate, Marxist-inspired writing of Sally Rooney. Or possibly a philosopher, after burning through Jean-Paul Sartre’s...
A conversation between different versions of myself, split between the characters ME and her inner voices, RISKY, CAUTION and WHY, who all respond to FRIEND. ME is the main character, trying to find balance...
My ordinary morning routine starts in a dreary, colorless bedroom, where I wake up facing blank walls and bare floors aside from the occasional dusty Lego set. I sift through my clothes either in my beaten...
