Nonfiction
by Erin Van Rheenen.
“The room with the gun is where my father-in-law, Phil, watches the news at full hectoring volume…The news he favors taps into his fear of the big bad world and anyone who isn’t him.” //
by Pia Jee-Hae Baur.
“I dislike switching doctors, primarily because every time I have to recount my medical history, I have to decide how much I should lie.”
I don’t even know why I want a tattoo. Maybe to commemorate the missing breast. Maybe to re-define beauty. Maybe just to cover the scar. All I know is something about the space screams canvas.
by D. Liebhart.
“When she was in her armchair, I brought her breakfast. She took a single bite then put down her spoon. “This is stupid,” she said. “This is only going to make it last longer.””
“How do you do it? How do you watch people die day after day?”
He asked the question as we passed each other on the threshold of his wife’s room. He was leaving after having said all the goodbyes that could be spoken with words.
She stands in my examining room unable to sit, pacing, then stopping tensely, as if paralyzed by the urge to pace. Three times she has made this appointment, three times a no-show.
by Claire A. Berman.
“…I understood that he’d been expressing his own insecurities, not mine. I entered new relationships full of trepidation. Symptoms and appearance were inextricably bound together in my mind, necessitating constant body vigilance to control them.”
by Anne Rudig.
“The blood I wished was mine almost killed Mindy. I began to wonder whether it wasn’t such a bad thing we weren’t related, but the thought felt so disloyal I dismissed it as soon as I could.”
I’m too young now to know how soon imaginary play will decay and mature into rumors and cliques and senior boys with beards who look at me like I’m simultaneously a toddler and a toy.