When a stray dog broke into the family garden one afternoon, my cat chased him back out onto the street.
House of Animals by Tal Abbady
Category: Essays
An archive of all of the personal essays we’ve published at Hippocampus Magazine over the years.
Good Intentions and a Bad Idea by Anjoli Roy
The thing is, I don’t even like dogs. In my world, dogs are either small, yappy things that gnaw your ankles or monsters that slobber on your sundresses.
Cowboys Are His Weakness by Kim Steutermann Rogers
I twiddle with the radio during the four-hour drive from the airport in Midland, Texas, to Big Bend National Park… Now, the airwaves match the landscape: vacant.
My Barber Ben by Barth Landor
My barber Ben cut hair in Auschwitz. He spent three and a half years in a darkness in which it would seem impossible for anything to have grown, including hair.
Glorious Defeats: Lessons in Emergency Medicine by Linda Keyes
“I said, can you get me something to eat bitch?” I stiffen. This is early on in my emergency medicine residency and I haven’t yet learned to reply, “That’s Doctor bitch to you, sir.”
Four Times More Likely by Rae Pagliarulo
When my father said the word predisposed, I felt a twinge of nerves. We were having “the talk.” Not the one about birds or bees, but something bigger and scarier that my brother and I would have to inevitably face…
The Wedding Ring by Chelsea Laine Wells
I was eight years old the first time my father pawned his wedding ring for drug money. When the fight started, I was standing heedlessly behind my mother thinking about birds.
Mismatched by Ola Osaze
You are wearing your purple knee-length dress because it’s the most pomp and circumstance you could muster for this day. Your brown flats are not so festive – you want to bend down and rub the scuff off the left one, but you don’t care enough.
The Amazing Technicolor Horse Dream by Lisa Romeo
I knew it was a lot to ask for, even though my father was rich and even though I was used to lavish vacations and a constant stream of new clothes.
One Day in August by Dan Grote
I’m no Lindbergh, but for 20 minutes or so one picturesque late summer, I, in my own adolescent mind, ruled the skies over Northern Illinois.
