Essays
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The Irrevocable Condition
These are all preposterous, illogical ideas that we wrap around ourselves as children, then cast off when we are somehow not anymore.
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Back into The Garden: The (Re)turn at the End of Ross Gay’s Poem “To the Mulberry Tree”
Close Reads is an essays column exploring a specific page, paragraph, or sentence from a book, film, piece of music, or other media.
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How to Feed a Dying Body
The difficulty comes when patients learn that dying or waiting to die is still living, and therefore the command for narrative lingers.
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Crows in this Part of New Delhi
After drinking water, crows wipe their beaks by perching on a Dish TV antenna, some on a bare-branched Mango tree, and some on a parapet wall.
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What Would E.T. Do?
A coming-of-age story for a boy, family, and civilization. A parable of wonder and crisis that taught me things my parents couldn’t.
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Corey Sobel, Strictly Speaking, Doesn’t Exist
While I lost my faith long ago, I have clearly retained this belief in, need for, existential variousness.
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from Sex with a Brain Injury
It comes from the sky: a meteor, a falling object, a box. It comes out of nowhere, a car, a baseball, an opponent’s fist, a partner’s fist, an officer’s baton. . . .
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Ghosts in the Mirror
My adoptive mother tells me I was precocious enough as a toddler to ask if I came from her belly. She says this was a sign I comprehended my adoption so early she never had to explain it to me.
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Debtors to a Mercy We Never Begged For
No, home is not as simple as the heart-shaped sandwiches Ma placed into my lunch bag on Valentine’s Day or the way my father confessed to listening to me sing shower showtunes or washing a car beside my brother as…
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Letter to My Mentee (October 26, 2023)
“This,” I say to my daughter, choking up, “is civilization. Not banking, not technology. Not weaponry that kills without a fight. This,” I go on, seeing her face pale, “is what it means to be civilized.”
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The Mothership
Most of all, I hoped they’d see how well I turned out and regret ever sending me away.
