Introspection
Kyle's Grandma Ruth
Kyle's grandma, Ruth, worked as a sewing instructor at the Henry Street Settlement — a social service organization in Manhattan’s Lower East Side — for over 50 years.
Kyle's Muse
It sounds strange to say that I look up to someone who’s a foot and a half shorter than me, but Grandma Ruth has always been my muse.
The Threads That Bind
I often marvel at how it must feel to move throughout the world with such lived experience — how a person can bear witness to so much history and still take to the streets every day in a plush faux-mink coat with the fervent zeal of a person eager to inhale the equally familiar and foreign sights, smells, and sounds of New York City.
Learning to Forget
It’s hard to resist the constant urge to document. But memory is just as much about forgetting as it is about remembering.
Anya Introspection
Grief comes in waves, by nature. And with each wave, I wish for the time to lament. I wish, also, for the strength to liberate whatever lingers when the capitalist clock chimes.
FMoments of Love 2023
This Valentine’s Day, we asked our writers and editors to write about something or someone they love — the lighthearted, the heartbreaking, the bittersweet, and everything in between. Here are their stories.
Poptropicapitalist Realism, or Love at the End of the World
Poptropica was profoundly uninterested in explaining why your character could jump, barter, and wheedle their way into saving the world. For me, as a kid, this was the coolest thing ever.
When We Let Grief Linger
There is something perpetual about Black death, for me. Something claustrophobic and inescapable and choking, something unbreathable and violent and bleak. That even if all the world were to cry, even if the earth’s screams could exorcize the misery of my innocence lost so young and the heartache that comes with every Black life taken, it wouldn’t be enough.
The Border of Forgiveness
In the Catholic Church, forgiveness is both God’s implicit promise to life and the edge on which we can either become redeemed or remain woefully flawed people. I worry that forgiveness may actually be the holiest act of all — precisely because I struggle most with it.
Cancer, or the Day God Was Sick
There’s no way to talk or write about illness; none that is good enough, anyway.
Chase Introspection
I started a job at a local independent bookstore. Work didn’t fix my loneliness, though I’d secretly hoped it would.
