Our archive of past pieces that are part of a larger work of creative nonfiction. Note that as of 2021 we no longer categorize pieces as “memoir.” We use only “essay” and flash” now. We kept this in our menu for historical purposes.
Sometimes her silences make me feel like I’m underwater, reaching upward through murky dark. My extended fingers reaching for a surface, trying to break through the invisible hydrogen bonds that separate air from sea.
He is thirty-five, wears Hai Karate aftershave, drives a maroon 1970 El Dorado, and sits too close to me on the piano bench. For the first fifteen minutes of every piano lesson, Vic Giovanni details his sexual exploits, claiming numerous rendezvous with many Hollywood actresses.
The clock on my nightstand says two thirty-three in the morning when the phone rings. “Ronnie!” my mother is whispering into the receiver. “¡Están aquí! They are here! They are coming in!” This is her third call tonight.
Inside their terrarium, Jake and Elwood, my sister’s boa constrictors, form a braid around a dried tree branch. I stare in at them.
The scene: a varsity basketball game held in some old, small gym in some old, small town, one where fans waited in line to get their hands stamped in exchange for flimsy red ticket stubs.
After three weeks of training, a period my classmates and I called Truck U., I had to pass two tests (written and driving) to earn a commercial driver’s license.
We’re going into fifth grade. We’ll be the bosses of the school: I’m trained as a crossing guard, and I’m one of a few responsible fifth-grade girls who will cover the phone while the school secretary has lunch…
From the time I was born until his death when I was thirteen, my father and I exchanged probably no more than a few hundred words.
A pretty, polka-dot envelope comes for me in the mail. My mother says I am too young for secret admirers, so we open the letter together. “It’s an invitation,” she smiles.
I heard the distinct sound of a sniffle as I looked up and saw a naked woman climb onto a cluttered desk.
