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I want to leave the party through the window and find my uncle standing on a piece of iron shaped into visible desperation, which must also be (how can it not?) the beginning of visible hope.
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That was my singular personal motivation for doing any of this work: to prevent the threat that this might happen to me. I naïvely believed that my parents would not die by their own hand because they had suffered as children of parents who had already died that way.
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You might gasp. You might gasp and your heart slips out. You whisper and let red willows drift toward the river.
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I wanted to write about opioids because I didn’t have an opioid problem.
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My father didn’t like my movie choices. He said they weren’t realistic. He’d been in the Air Force and was deployed in Vietnam. He’d brought back his own war stories.
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This made sense to me. Body + stressor = reaction.
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This was a reconnaissance mission. My intention was to save her, not alienate her.
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A family’s grief traps generations in a search for insight.
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“Stories hurt, stories heal, stories save our lives.”
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Karla Cornejo Villavicencio discusses her first book, THE UNDOCUMENTED AMERICANS.
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A block away from my house, Reina killed herself.
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Each sentence is calculated; each word explodes.
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All your efforts and still you must reckon with this end.
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Sejal Shah discusses her debut essay collection, THIS IS ONE WAY TO DANCE.
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Erin Pringle discusses her debut novel, HEZADA! I MISS YOU.
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In my hands is the record of my youth.
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She was living in little shack balanced among the branches of a tree.
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To grieve is to demonstrate dedication to those we love.
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Kristen Arnett discusses her new novel, MOSTLY DEAD THINGS.
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Maybe the worst part about living with this is that it doesn’t leave me.
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Marin Sardy discusses her debut memoir, THE EDGE OF EVERY DAY: SKETCHES OF SCHIZOPHRENIA.
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I want a PhD in how to want, effortlessly, to be alive.
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The human animal was at war with itself. It was a cosmic joke with no teller.
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That’s how I felt again, then: a child suddenly fallen, helpless. Unable even to breathe.
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Can I be blamed for my relief? My anger?
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Feet dangle in the foreground, suspended in space by distance and gravity.
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It’s not that easy. It’s never that easy.
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Colonies. Communities. Our children are collapsing.
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