No Ending In sixth grade I wrote a scary story about a girl who goes to stay at her creepy aunt’s house. Freshman year I wrote a dystopian story about predetermined futures. Sophomore year I wrote a short story about meeting my seventy-five year old self. What do all these [...]
Finally Home I am not American. Technically speaking, I am an American citizen, and I was born in San Francisco; however, I have never been able to fully identify myself as living among the American culture. While my father and his brothers were the first generation to be born in [...]
Bug Girl For the entirety of elementary school, I was the weird bug girl. whenever the errant beetle, earwig, or spider wandered into the room, it became my time to shine. I would delicately carry out each six- or eight-legged creature amid the horrified gasps and screams of me classmates. [...]
Graffiti Artist Walking through the streets of downtown Portland, Oregon, trying to find a place to eat dinner in the mecca of food trucks and creative doughnuts, I remember seeing graffiti everywhere: on the side of a building, framing a walk through an alley, on a bridge across the Willamette [...]
For a Straightened Spine I am a worrier. I spend hours filling my mind with endless possibilities of what could go wrong. Maybe the outfit I planned for tomorrow won’t be worn because of a sudden weather change, maybe I’ll forget my homework at home and get a zero, and [...]
The Hands I Grew Up With The hands I grew up holding were not soft, manicured hands that spent their days at rest. The hands I grew up with were rough, calloused: working hands. Walking through the park one afternoon--when I was three or so--my tiny hand encased in the [...]
My Sacrifice I gazed down at the bottom of the pool and focused on my stroke. As I came up for air, I could see my coach waving her arms in a frantic manner, gesturing for me to speed up my pace. It was my meet last of the season, [...]
Without Tears Thirteen years; seems like quite a long time, doesn’t it? Well over a decade, and if counted from birth, takes up most of your childhood life; yes thirteen years can be seen as a substantial amount of time-- a lengthy period of life. Well, at least until it’s [...]
I Am No Olympian This was it, finally. The sun was glaring down at me, beating me with its endless, Apollo-worthy electromagnetic hammer of brightness. Sweat flowed down my face like jubilant magma flowing from a cryptodomic volcano. The dust from the track rose around me like an army [...]
Rise Above Fashion It was an early Friday morning, a day planned to be one of the most rewarding for Joshua Woods because he would finally get his hands on those Nike Air Jordan XI ‘Bred’ sneakers. It began as a simple trip to Willowbrook Mall with his friend; they [...]