From the Archives: Rumpus Original Fiction: Lunch Money
Out here on the balcony, perched three stories above the ground, we’re in her world.
...moreBecome a Rumpus Member
Join NOW!Out here on the balcony, perched three stories above the ground, we’re in her world.
...moreI was fine. No one and nothing could hurt me.
...more“What’s a six-letter word for ignoring truth,” she might say, without looking up from the puzzle.
...moreI read somewhere that sounds don’t stop, they keep going all the way into deep space, reflecting off whatever might be in the way and speeding infinitely on. My head feels like deep space, and those voices haven’t even begun to wind down in there.
...moreThe important thing to remember when climbing a pole, a rope, a mountain is to not look down.
...moreAfterward, there was dead silence in the kitchen. I know because I held my breath. Even air molecules seemed to still.
...more“Things can catch fire even when they let each other go. But we don’t give up. We don’t stop loving them.”
...moreA Rumpus series of work by women, trans, and nonbinary writers that engages with rape culture, sexual assault, and domestic violence.
...moreEveryone, even the most tell-all writer, withholds something in the interests of protecting herself or others, but my interest in my own stories has always been to use them to illustrate larger stories about the culture . . .
...moreI am sick with grief, triggered by my mother’s death, in turn triggered by Chardonnay.
...moreCynthia Dewi Oka discusses her new collection, FIRE IS NOT A COUNTRY.
...moreYou are never really at peace with what you haven’t gotten.
...moreI feel guilt in the not good enough I carry alongside the not bad enough.
...moreThe mother, too, is a monument. I am haunted by mine.
...moreAmanda Moore discusses her debut collection, REQUEENING.
...moreTo be imbricated in hundreds of years of colonial violence is to be entangled in colorist logics and stories of loss and belonging that are rarely linear or singular.
...more“Life is incredibly sad, but it’s also funny, joyful, wonderful, and strange.”
...moreGene Kwak discusses his debut novel, GO HOME, RICKY!
...moreJenny Qi discusses her debut poetry collection, FOCAL POINT.
...moreLeonora Simonovis discusses her debut collection, STUDY OF THE RAFT.
...moreI took a deep breath. A long one. And I started rocking again.
...moreAmid all this survival, Cho carries the reader through with the comfort of food.
...moreFinding joy in the now, even as death and difficulty mark the days, is possible, a choice, and a practice.
...moreThere is a cloudy line between noise and sound, routine and ritual.
...moreThe best books I have read about motherhood have not reassured me that these feelings will resolve.
...moreTo have lost, found, and then lost again seems especially wrenching, a kind of unmothering.
...moreA fossil. A body. A message from a recovered life.
...moreMy miraculous children were mine, and mine alone.
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