Strangers at Birth
My mother wasn’t much of one. If you put aside the fact that she abandoned me, in the winter, less than twenty-four hours after I entered the world, then the note she left propped on my thin yellow cotton blanket said it all: Take her. I can’t do this. I Read more
Searching For Home
At night, after my day as a spice merchant concludes, the smell of garlic and onion dust coats my clothes and body like a new skin, as though I am someone different. I do not shower before visiting my parents, my scent melds with their age and confinement. My mother Read more
Dating a Narcissist Eleven Years Later
It was our 11th anniversary on the New Year of 2021. Our daughter woke up early but wanted to go and play so it was just us two in bed on a late Friday morning. I was on my phone when he fully woke up and he snuggled his back Read more
FROM THE LIFE OF IRIS ORIGO
(a cento, mostly) “The days go by waiting for better times.” I Day after day we sat in the library of our isolated country house, listening to the voices on the radio with an increasing sense of doom — Hitler and Dolfuss, Eden and Chamberlain, schoolchildren and soldiers singing Fascist Read more
Cowboy in Red is Cheating
1: The Heroine A funeral is lace, carnations, pinks, and old flesh. For Emma, dressing hurriedly for a grandmother’s send-off, it was going to be a showdown. Emma frowned as she did up pearl buttons on her white blouse. The yellow shirt had been too happy; the pink, too gentle. Read more
The Girl with Her Heart in a Box
There once was a girl who kept her heart in a box. She met a man and wanted to show him her heart. She opened the box, and took out her heart, piece by piece, laying it on the floor for him to see. You see, another man had once Read more