WHEN THE BLOOMIS OFF THE ROSE BY ROBERTA HOLLAND Death has a smell, a sickly pungence that clings to the living around it, the kind of lingering odor that hours later makes your dog sniff your clothing with concern. After watching my mother’s last percolating breath, her final exhale, I recognized the scent of decay that coated me like dust particles. I knew that smell. It was buried deep inside of me;
SEASONS BY JEAN WIDNER I flip on the light at the top of the stairs in the house. It’s still “our house” even though I left for Southern California over twenty years ago. Even now as a grown woman, the basement is one of my favorite haunts. It’s cool and a bit damp, musty but not dusty. Warm with the fragrances of leftover wood my father would piddle with in his workshop.
LA CORONA BY ANGELICA REYES It’s the summer of 1985, my 13th birthday, and I’m gonna make good on my promise to chop off all my hair. Close to 30 inches of long, thick, dark hair that everyone is in awe of. This crown of hair is being put to the test in DIY beauty shop experiments led by Mommy Dearest and her gaggle of sisters, The Tías.
UNTITLED BY MATTHEW SPENCER how does a fly get to be what it does?spent my whole life sortin’ thru this kind of fuzz a dandelion of dreams floating thru infinite screamsunderwater naps calming all these habituated schemes i want the joy back
SKILLED APATHY BY MARGARITA TROSHINA “Too emotional.”“Too challenging.”“Too much.” These key descriptors missing from my adoptee bio would go on to shape my personality, completely catching my parents off guard as the orphanage had failed to disclose these traits. As I settled into my new life, I sought hard to mirror my family’s innate emotional apathy, however I lacked their emotional baseline and every feeling seemed to toss me around like a perpetual bungee jump.
THE SMELL OF BONDING BY DANIELLE ORR LISTEN TO THE AUTHOR READING: As I tossed the quartered oranges, butter, and freshly squeezed orange juice into the Cuisinart for the orange marmalade muffins that morning, I thought about how I did not like the scent of my mother as a child. Even now, I really do not like her perfume. If I think about it, which I do not like to do, I have an aversion to her. The scent turns my
TikTok BY JESSIE HUNTER One evening last spring, I was flopped on the front room couch participating in my daily ritual of scrolling TikTok, when a filter came across my feed: Which Brother/Sister Are You? I tapped to see the grid of bemused content creators sharing their results: The Smart One, The Rebel, The Whiner, The Animal Lover. Craving the forgotten rush of a Buzzfeed quiz, I tried
LIMINAL SPACES BY FEMALE FLEMING The gap between what is and what could be is so wide and deep most cannot see the impact of not knowing one’s true identityexcept
WHAT DID YOU DO? BY REBECCA COHEN Trigger Warning: This story alludes to childhood sexual assault. In second grade a neighbor kid invited me over to show off how well she could play “Für Elise” on her shiny grand piano—she even had it memorized. It was a beautiful piano, three or four times the size of the tinny upright at my house, and rich sound flowed easily from it, filling the room.
DISTURBED ROOTS BY JULIE MAE PIGOTT I didn’t see her because dragonfly wings are translucent. I never looked for her, because during the day, phosphorescence isn’t visible to the naked eye. My dreams couldn’t conjure the tangle of her thick ropey umbilicus that connected to my navel. Like all children, my fingers explored the tattoo of belly button on soft belly. I mean, we all have one, right? Suspended curiosity followed me over the years.
SAUCE & MUSK BY CARRIE ANNE TOCCI LISTEN TO THE AUTHOR READING: Sauce Since the pandemic, instead of hand-washing my dishes, sometimes after dinner or later in the evening, after I pour crystals into the small portal in the door of the dishwasher, I let the thrash and roll of water lull me to sleep, sometimes worrying plastic items might overheat and catch fire, because as an adult adopted person, like the younger adopted person I once was, I am always on guard,
ADOPTEE-SENSE BY AUDREY B Adoptee life as a riddlelife played out from the middle all roads winding somewhererequiring you care, share, and stare intothe sun until full moon negotiates
YOU WERE BORN FREE BY a.p. “I think being adopted was a gift…” are words that I never NEVER would have imagined saying out loud. And certainly wouldn’t dare utter in mixed company. I’ve learned that most kept people (the antithesis of adopted people) suffer from chronic misinterpretation when engaging with anything adoption-related. And there I was, just a few weeks ago. Saying these words out loud, for the first time.