In the television show, Once Upon a Time, the Pied Piper is really Peter Pan who is really Rumplestiltskin’s father who is really the crocodile whose ticking belly might be only ticking in Captain Hook’s mind, who may not be the villain he is made out to be. The story goes that Captain Hook wasn’t […]
Can I be real with you for a second, reader? I’m exhausted. I’ve gone straight past tired and landed on a weariness that settles into your bones, under your eyes, makes a home in your heart. It’s been a long semester and each day feels like a never-ending marathon that I’ve not prepared for. I […]
Lagging with a quarter tank on the Taconic, I scroll back to an archive of music bereft of life—indie and alternative music confined to its inception. Still, nostalgia (even under false pretenses) thaws the distinctions between the seasons. A couple of songs in, an exiled piece crescendos. It recoils against my expectations, voiding the […]
After years of protests to close Rikers Island Jail, New York City’s City Council finally decided to shut down the complex. While this decisions should have been met with praise, the decision was far from being a major feat. The decision has amassed significant criticism. If you have not been following the Close Rikers […]
My mother said we ought to watch it together, Surviving R. Kelly. We’d talked about his case around my grandmother’s kitchen table, and we all agreed that it was disgusting, terrible, sad. We sang “Step in the Name of Love” in parody of ourselves, or at least the selves who had danced to it at […]
“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.” —Jorge Luis Borges, “La Biblioteca de Babel” I was born in the 1980s. I had a pager years before my first cell phone. In highschool I spent hours on the family computer, in chat rooms with friends and strangers, often while talking […]
When I first heard the news, I couldn’t fully internalize what had happened. Shabbat had just ended. The warm scent of cloves and sickly sweet grape juice still lingered over the table. I checked my phone–for the first time in 24 hours–and I remember barely glancing at the notifications at the top of my […]
I packed next to my cardigans and tampons, my three Tyler Perry DVDs, counted among the essentials for my impending freshman year of college. They fit neatly at the bottom of my suitcase, flush against the bottom, the hard plastic a contrast to the soft fabric cushioned against it. I’d found them in a 5$ […]
I used to hate my little brother. The day I came into the hospital to see him after my mom gave birth felt more like mourning than celebration—I had years of being the only one, the sole source of attention in my tiny family, the epicenter of love, the “baby,” only for it to be […]
August 5th, 2019: “We must stop the glorification of violence in our society. This includes the gruesome and grisly video games that are now commonplace. It is too easy today for troubled youth to surround themselves with a culture that celebrates violence.”—Donald J. Trump, 45th President of the United States. One day before, on August […]
