What You Eat
The embarrassing thing about dying is, people talk. We list heart attack, stroke, cancer as causes of death, but we know the behaviors that lead to these things. If you’ve lived long enough, people have seen you engage in many—a cigarette after dinner, some reckless driving. In death, it all …
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Tender Head
I felt safe going back to his apartment after our first date because I’d met him at the library. In front of the Hot Summer Reads! display, he’d been beanstalk-tall in an R.E.M. t-shirt. Jeans cuffed around his ankles and a Kundera novel in an oversized hand. Later, at the …
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Anesthesia
The homeowner was drinking cocktails by the pool. He mixed them up on a small metal cart stocked with glassware, ice, and liquor. He’d had a few already. The pool boy knew from the work order that the man’s name was O’Hara. “The trick to a good Old Fashioned,” …
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Anybody?
Have you ever stood on the front porch of your mother’s house, talking to your uncle, a big ol’ redneck with a big ol’ mustache, the kind of man who gets upset about police brutality and who doesn’t understand why those guys use their guns, because when he worked in …
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Lake Bird Flying
The first time I found you snacking in the closet on durian chips and mooncakes three years expired, you told me that we all have our secrets. You dropped a handful of red and gold candy in my hands—barely big enough to hold it all—that you had stolen from some …
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A Small Part
The star is beautiful. No, beautiful is too simple. She is ethereal. She is moonlight, and her rugged co-star is a snow-capped mountain. No—she’s an orchid, and he’s a bend in a lazy river. You are an extra seated across the plane’s aisle. If the leads are moonlight and mountains …
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Mom’s Night Out
It’s been a long week, and we’re all excited to be out. Excited to be eating our dinner without a small human on our laps. Excited to not be needed for a few hours. Excited to be among friends. One of us has put in fifty hours at the office …
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Essay One for English 101 by Angela Abaya Ono
Have you ever seen a walrus fall from the sky? Forced to find space on a crowded melting glacier, the walrus scales steep ice cliffs. Unfortunately, they have poor depth perception. Seeing the ocean, they leap from the bluff, blubbery bodies cartwheeling through the air before plummeting into the sea …
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I Retrospect Nature
This piece was shared with us by Amy Losak, daughter of the author, Sydell Rosenberg (1929-1996). While Rosenberg’s short stories are works of fiction, they are loosely based on her life as the daughter of immigrant Eastern European Jews in New York City. I was a child of the …
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Zephyr
SJ boards the California Zephyr at 7:03 PM in Denver. It’s her first time aboard the train, and it overwhelms her. She’s never experienced anything like climbing onto the second floor of a giant, movable building and being welcomed by an impossibly long hallway of large, royal-blue seats. She stows …
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