Essays + Narratives

I look in the mirror post-shower and catch myself unraveling a story about what this body used to look like. Romanticized memories of sun-kissed skin, firm, fit, petite, and acceptable to the image the world calls “good” threaten to take me down a dead-end road of self-sabotage. Some days these stories win. I take them […]

1. Skin With a wave of my hand— yes, this hand wrapped in wrinkled skinfolds striated with veins like ridges across a mountain range, its ancient beauty splayed for admiring— With a wave of this hand I banish the illusionary elixir, this boastful bottle of serum, a trumped-up mixture of vitamin A1 commingled with vitamin […]

My mother reclines on the sofa, her salt and pepper hair dangling over the armrest. An afternoon soap opera drones in the background, my oversized kindergarten backpack hangs in the closet, and I set up the supplies to play hairdresser: a glass of water, a tortoiseshell barrette, a large claw clip with gold springs, and […]

I return home from my six-week postpartum appointment and stare down the fourth drawer of my dresser. Should I do it?  It’s been more than six months since I shimmied into a pair of jeans—right before everything shut down because of a global pandemic. Since then, I’ve rotated wearing the same two pairs of forgiving […]

You read many things about motherhood before you enter it, but you never learn about the loneliness. Even if you could read about it, you wouldn’t understand it until you were in it.  When my first child was born, I wasn’t alone—physically. My husband stayed home from work for weeks after the birth, and I […]