As soon as I step out of the car, the strong scent of incense hits me and mingles with the humidity in the gray, rain-heavy air. The smell reminds me of citronella, the mosquito repellent my mom would slather on herself early in the evening, only for it to end up caked under her nails after scratching the bug bites that would inevitably dot her arms and legs. This is where my great-grandparents are buried, where my grandparents are now sealed away behind a slab of engraved stone, in a suburb of the extravagantly sunny Los Angeles next to actors and stuntmen, the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz and the former princess of Egypt. This is where home is supposed to be.
Category: Creative non-fiction
(grand)mother tongue by Josafina Garcia
I am a mutant. A being living between two spaces I (don’t) know how to occupy.
I don’t know how to speak Spanish, a torment that pulls at my insides. A feeling that festers like anger like rage, it bubbles like tears as they slide hot down my face. I am reminded of this feeling when my grandmother is downstairs watching telenovelas after my brother’s graduation. When the voices drift up the sitars and pour into the crack of my bedroom door like a lullaby of sounds I can only piece together. When I laugh at the half-broken text messages my grandmother sends me on my birthday, an attempt to tell me that she loves me but the words just don’t line up right. When my grandmother calls my mother in the car and the conversation carries through the speakers, a blending of languages as they slip between worlds, the ease of a conversation I can’t follow.
Big, Big World by Michelle Li
It begins with you.
*
Our story starts in the year 2002. You had just turned 25 years old. You were young and so beautiful (you still are) that you were often mistaken as the actress Joey Wong by passersby. It’s late September, and the leaves are starting to fall. They crunch beneath your black boots and luggage bags as you walk toward the airport terminal. The wind tangles itself through your hair and blows past your jacket. The air is cold, filled with pollution and thick smoke. You cannot see the sun.
Mitteleurope by Liam Foley
We arrived in Budapest at night and caught the bus towards the centre. Through the dark glass we looked into its suburbs. They are austere and the wind is cold in the winter. At our accommodation, we sat and shared a beer. Laura went on her phone. After some time, she said that the invasion of Ukraine had begun.
We hadn’t eaten and decided to go out for some food. The streets were partially lit. Thick misty breath rose above the people as they paced through the frozen night. Some were alone, others were in groups.
Our TMNT Pizza Party by Shawn Berman
It’s our first night together as a couple in Brooklyn and you’re belting out the theme song to the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. Till this day, it’s probably hands down our favorite TMNT film to be made—not that crappy Michael Bay-produced rebooted one where the turtles don’t even look like turtles but more like creatures from a drunken nightmare that you can’t wake up from.
Even though you only know the very beginning of the theme song–heroes in a half shell turtle powerrrr—it doesn’t bother me. Not one bit. In fact, I find it kinda funny and join along, making sure to harmonize with your off-key vocals, mostly because I don’t want to disrupt the radness of the moment since I know these moments don’t come too often these days ever since we both got grownup jobs in the city making it that much harder to find time for one another. Still—we try.
Red Pepper Dare by Jasmina Kuenzli
“Your coworker seems to be upset about something. What do you do?”
It was a rainy day, and the two of us were sitting in the office, stewing in an awkward silence.
I don’t remember who was there with us. Just like I don’t remember if it was summer or fall. I think that it was raining outside the window, and it was late in the day.
Idle Ink 