There was always a map in our mother’s lap as we drove over states we’d never imagined before; leaving our Pennsylvania discount-outlet-shopping-mall town that smelled of fried onions, matzo balls, fathers and grandparents—leaving a television that blinked blue all…
I We are standing in the doorway of our grandparents’ basement apartment, staring straight through the house to the back door. Step outside, and you are at the bottom of a square, concrete pit covered by a black…
I glare at the pull-down menu on the laptop screen, the arrow painting each choice baby blue as I send it running up and down, up and down. With each click, a new country or continent. Congo. Costa Rica. …
What’s in a mosquito bite? Unlike Eastern equine encephalitis, the viral strain that sickened people in Massachusetts and New York in August 2024, Western equine encephalitis seems to have gone dormant in the United States. Data from the Centers…
i. denial I can’t admit I’ve fucked up. Not to myself, and certainly not to anyone else. It simply doesn’t track. I’m the responsible one in the family. The reliable one. The sober one. Rock steady, perpetually calm…
Where is your father? He’s dead, Mommy. She sobs over the piece of frosted layer cake the memory care center has given her as a welcome celebration. She forks bites of chocolate and thick white buttercream into her…
Uranium Tailings #12, Elliot Lake, Ontario. I was searching for an image of mill tailings. Burtynsky, of course, I thought when I found it. The photograph shows black, barren trees, thin and broken like toothpicks that appear to be…
The flesh on his arms, like an overripe banana, peels as I drag my nails upward. Ribbons of crimson appear—thin, jagged trails up and down his skin. My brother doesn’t just yell—he shrieks. Not my older brother at all…
Two Thirds Terror, One Third Romance On vacations, my father encouraged me to keep travel diaries. These were less diaries than documents—drawings, descriptions, and artifacts recording our movements each travel day. You’ll treasure them when you’re older, he reasoned.…
Kayu Putih, Northeast Jakarta I wake up on New Year’s Day to a world underwater. Or at least it feels that way: the neighborhood has sunken overnight in an opaque brown liquid dotted with moving heads. Two women move…
