Lauren Sharpe Domesticity, Now Sometimes, I pretend to be a baby so that my 4-year-old can pretend to teach me how to talk. She tells me a word and I repeat it back to her. Tonight, we snuggled…
Browsing: Prose
Megan Sound Bright, Shining Light I imagine some day I will tell my daughter about how, when she occupied my womb, I ate foods I believed would make her strong. I will tell her it must have worked…
Jessica Feder-Birnbaum Just A Dog The dog is picky with food. His glands are swollen. Blood work shows Canine Lymphoma. Chemotherapy offers a shot at remission. There is rarely a cure. The kids say you favor the dog. Not your…
Kathy Kurz Flesh “This is for you, Mom.” My youngest daughter, Julia, is home from college for the first time proudly showing me ‘my’ tattoo—sprays of lilacs and dogwood blossoms covering her shoulder. I try to be pleased. She explains:…
Aversion by Erica Hoffmeister There is (a rather common, I’m told) condition similar to postpartum depression, similar to PTSD, aptly named nursing aversion—aversion, the rejection of—in which a physical and mental emotional sensation overtakes your woman-body, your mother-body, like…
Mother Musing by Sally Donaldson I am the cruise director on a ship of fools. I organize my motley crew of might-have-beens and should-have-been. They line up at my command and refuse to do anything I tell them. They…
Dear Matthew by Brenda Bellinger No doubt this letter has already been opened for you. I’m trying to picture you now, age-progressed since I held you in my arms when you were two months old. You were an adorable…
Radhiyah Ayobami how maybelle survived new york who needed the north / when there was the smell of gardenias at night as she slept between two big sisters in a hollow / of skin & smell so when girls at…
THREE CREATIVE NONFICTION PIECES FROM LINDA MICHEL-CASSIDY TWENTY-TWO She thinks she needs to have her life figured out. At her age, I was in a rigorous graduate program, terrified of each day, unable to free myself from a…
THREE CREATIVE NONFICTION PIECES FROM MARIA BENET IMPRINT At the end of Spielberg’s film, “A.I.,” David, the prototype robot child built with the sole purpose to love unconditionally, survives for millennia in a world ravaged by uncountable and…