JANUARY 2020. 7234 miles from Chicago, China reports the first death from a novel coronavirus. There is no evidence it can spread among humans.
I'm commuting to school and two women on the train are
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Who knows how the rumor started?
The whistle shrieks. "Out," Armena Mint, Four Square Captain, declares.
Maybe some boy made it up—you know how they are.
"What? How? The ball
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The empty street seemed brighter than it had a few hours earlier and my eyes began to adjust. Maybe it seemed that way because I had spent the last two hours watching a movie. Or the sun had just ... [+]
The Chinese New Year was approaching. The muffled chimes of the temple bell froze in the air. The eerie orange hue of the sky mingled with the light cyan mist. Few pedestrians ducked their heads like ... [+]
I took the metro everyday past Tula and the station, South, from the farthest point within Moscow's transport limits. It's where the Germans stopped in 1942, and where the buses brought in people from ... [+]
"The fifth wave of Covid is hitting Hong Kong. Over 12,000 confirmed cases awaiting hospitalization. People rushed to public hospitals by different public transports." The news report from my ... [+]
Mom came to America, hungry for a slice of the American dream. Her first bite was a man from Texas, a recent divorcée who was sweet, with an aftertaste of debt. Still, America was the "shining City ... [+]
Abuelo is dying.
He has been dying for a while, some odd quantity of months.
I have learned that like plants, humans can wither so quickly.
One day, we are so healthy our flowers are fully
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You always hear people talking about their mom being their best friend or their mom doing this and that for them and being so excited to see them, but what about when that's not the case? What about ... [+]
I bounce back and forth between how long it feels like since I was in high school. Like a century and one week at the same time. I could endlessly flip through the blurry stack of memories, many of ... [+]
You will meet a man who tells you we are all made of the stuff of stars. That our bodies hold the carbon and nitrogen and helium and oxygen atoms that formed the ancestors of stars we see today. He'll ... [+]
Heart pounding wildly, he cavorted through the house, wreaking botanical havoc. Hearing an anguished cry as his assault on the houseplants was discovered, he tossed his head in spirited defiance ... [+]
Two minutes before it happened, Maya and I lay in the middle of the hallway while the other six students paced and drank from the water fountain. With our brains jittery after the multiple-choice ... [+]
In the midst of a village, South of Africa
When we all thought we have done our duty as mourners
Digging the grave, because there was no funeral plan
He died a sinner, from spiritual spell
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into the garage, no more Buick or Honda, now driving his oldest grandchild and her babies between Wake Forest suburb and student seminary housing. No more museum of decapitated brooms, empty dusty ... [+]
When I was a kid, I would throw birthday parties for Martin Luther King Jr. I knew his birthday because it was a national holiday, a Monday for me to have a three-day weekend off from school. I joke ... [+]
According to some people, the restored gospel of Jesus Christ has brought as a consequence the quick rise of technology. Initially, this assumption was considered because during the centuries previous ... [+]
