Nausea knocked around my empty stomach with nothing to temper it. This woman looked just like the Wikipedia image of Edith Wharton I fell asleep to. Was I seeing pixels come to life? No. I needed to get a healthier sleep schedule now that Ramadan was over, it was clearly affecting my brain.
(fiction)
“We see these policemen over here…” The intersection above them was lined with uniformed police in crowd control gear. “…surrounding our demonstration. They say they’re here to protect and serve, but who are they protecting? Who are they serving?”
(fiction)
By seventh grade students often work with percentages, fractions, probability and proportional relationships. Math looks different at our Long Covid house. We practice for survival, not standardized testing. What percentage of a medication is metabolized by the liver? By the kidneys? What fraction of the pediatric population gets well?
(nonfiction)
The way I’d savor, lovesick, a stricken voice preserved on tape as if in amber. The way I banked those messages. Playing them over and again as proof that once, I had made him care. Echo of skin and moisture and shine and shame. Power diminishing with repetition.
(nonfiction)
There was another reason why I opted not to become a doctor like my daddy. He was the only pediatric urologist in town, so he left for work before I woke, shuttled between two hospitals throughout the day, and returned home after my bedtime. Unbeknownst to me, when he would come to give me a goodnight kiss while I was fast asleep, I’d stick out my tongue at him.
(nonfiction)
the opening of a cut grape
the butterfly
if it were to lightly rest upon the extremity of the grape
and pretend to drink
if it wasn’t drinking
what was to be done then?
I would have to
improve how well I see, with these eyes
improve how well I hear sounds
and so, employing my hands
I noticed
the smallest of movements
(translations)
The holes breathed damp breath that wasn’t quite alive but wasn’t dead either. It takes little to make beauty out of wreckage, wreckage out of beauty. Winter sun gleams in the spray, constellates in the ice. A Buick skids from the road and tumbles across a bare field.
(nonfiction)
Another Chicago Magazine 