Each day, Noel awoke to silence that seemed to stretch endlessly. The specialized confinement training chamber trapped not only his body, but his mind in a timeless void. Minutes had become hours, then at some point hours seamlessly transitioned into…
I sit in the pretend barbershop in our kitchen. My mom and two young daughters gather around me, while my husband shaves the last patchy clumps of hair from my scalp. Tears flow out of my mother’s eyes—she wipes them…
The clock ticks on 11:42. A spacious classroom of desks are lined up neatly, children are scattered, quietly taking notes as Mr. Matherson explains the history of the Silk Road. Noelle sits in the front row like she does in…
I – Freefall
Pumping my legs higher, higher, my feet scrape the painfully blue October sky. As the day gathers itself down, my shoes slice through the gnarled crowns of pines now brushed with gold. The swing’s momentum carries my…
On a train ride back home from a rehearsal last month, I discovered that the jazz drummer Roy Haynes passed away at age 99. Roy was one of the greatest drummers in history, a pioneer in modern jazz who played…
I wake with a start at midnight. A nightbird striking the window? A bat in the eaves? Maybe someone in the theater of my sleep gave me a nudge—someone I don’t know in waking life. It is cloudy and warm…
The following is an excerpt from my novel, Kata, which tells the story of a deteriorating friendship between two women—one Croatian, one American—living in present-day Sarajevo. The American, Yancey, narrates.
Out in the courtyard, Jude gave me the milk and half a bag of espresso. It was after eight, and I still had a thirty-minute walk. I texted Kata but heard nothing back and worried I’d upset her, but then I thought, This is life. Things happen. Kata and I aren’t under the gun to see a movie by a certain time. No one has to wake up at dawn. I didn’t feel like waiting for a tram, and I wasn’t going to take a taxi on such a beautiful night. Jude walked with me to Begova Džamija. He kissed my cheeks politely near the entrance to the secret pekara …
On November 25, 1915, Albert Einstein published his famous theory of General Relativity, which is a geometrical representation of gravity. In this work, Einstein described how spacetime curves in the presence of energy/matter. According to the theory of General Relativity,…
My Dad always said I had caramel skin. “A perfect combination of your mom and me.” Growing up, I never thought twice about the color dynamic within my family. To me, having a Mom and Dad that looked different from each other never struck me as strange. There have been plenty of discussions about mixed-race marriage (it took a 1967 Supreme Court ruling to make it legal. In all US states) but there is rarely any dialogue regarding the child that splits the two races: the people who bridge what is often perceived as the “privileged” and the “oppressed.” I found out for myself that to be in between these two worlds, meant my language and understanding had to change consistently and frequently. The frustrating part is, that those assumptions aren’t necessarily always from outside observers, they can also be from individuals within the group I’m trying to fit myself into. ...
She’s sitting at her dinner table, looking out the window as the winter passes through. “I’ll take care of the snow in the morning.” It’s the last thing she remembers. It’s been a long time since she heard another person’s…
