Gray and Naked

On a recent visit to my mother’s, I sprawled in T-shirt and shorts in the front yard of her house, relishing the California sunshine. As I angled my head for the best late afternoon rays, my mother, sitting in the shade behind me, disturbed the heavy air and our customary silence with a Eureka sort of shriek. “You sure have a lot of gray hair!”

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memoir, 2016SLMDonna Miscolta
The Call-List

During my first morning therapy session in the psych ward, about sixteen of us sat around a kids’ table that only came up to my knees. “Everyone takes a turn,” Rick, the psychologist, told us. “Tell us how you’re feeling this morning—and you can’t say ‘tired.’”

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memoir, 2016SLMJacob Little
Our Younger Selves

Mother never told me what would happen with my body. My period started when I was eleven, when we lived in Guadalajara. I thought it was my fault. She found the bloodied clothes wadded in the back of the dresser, sighed and said, go ask your sister where the supplies are.

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memoir, 2016SLMDorothy Rice
Home, As It Were

It won’t be home any longer, that tub of iron and porcelain, perched on bricks, and the grey blue stone that we laid down ourselves with paste and effort and hope. The children bathe with lavender and soap, boats too, plastic cups, little men with overalls, a tiny brush for their fingers I bought at a market in a city I don’t remember.

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XO

I see us standing on a street corner, bright sun, hidden in plain sight, and I see my hand reach for his—and the hesitation before he allows me to turn his palm upward—and right there, where anyone might see, I draw an X upon him.

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memoir, 2016SLMSara Rauch
Ode to Wal-Mart

Wal-Mart on a Sunday night is swollen and hungry and loud, but let us ignore the sadness so we don’t break and get toed under the bottom shelf, or chucked in a cart and rolled to clearance to soften like pumpkins in November. Forgive the cheap imports and foodstuff and low wages and death of independent business. Please. We can’t take it.

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Brad Beckett: A Eulogy

“God damnit, Jesse!” screamed my history teacher, as he kicked over a front-row desk that had remained—like all the front-row desks—unoccupied. His name was Brad Beckett. I always liked to imagine that he was a relative of Samuel Beckett, the playwright, but there were lots of Becketts in New England, and really I had no reason to have made the connection.

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memoir, 2016+SLMMatthew Sirois
Fill in the Blanks

In the beginning: sound. Metal striking metal.

In the beginning: sensation. The torque of a rollercoaster. And then my car stops and I awake fully to the white billows of the air bag. Pain from my side where the seat belt has cracked my ribs. Afterwards, I wear green black and purple in a beauty-queen sash of a bruise.

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Stomach

1. Once, I had a tiny pink lizard named Ike who consumed his freshly shed skin before it was entirely separate from his body. The act of shedding and eating was repulsive and entrancing; I peered through the glass to watch on the wooden stool I had swiped from the kitchen. The fluidity of the motion gave the illusion the tiny creature was grinning as he consumed his own flesh.

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Let Me Tell You How We Met

Every couple has a definitive how-and-where-we-met narrative. Here’s the one my husband and I tell at dinner parties:

I was a counselor on a teen tour to Israel. He was the manager. He hired me. We fell in love in Israel that summer, the summer of 2000, the summer just before the second intifada.

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memoir, 2016SLMJen Maidenberg
Photography

I take a picture of your coffee cup after you leave. Then I lick the spoon you used, still resting in the cup, still tasting of the warm, bitter liquid. But not of you, of course.

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memoir, 2016SLMS.M. Whitfield
Punch

The first time I saw my dad hit someone, the movement was too fast and too slow at the same time. One moment, he was walking, and the next there was blood all over the hallway from the other man’s nose. The blood shone against the white tile floor. I stood there forever while it spread, and the sound of pain the other man made struggled through the thickened air to catch up to me.

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memoir, 2016SLMErica Naone
My House Burned Down

In most cases, “My house burned down” is a get out of jail free card. For instance, “I’m sorry officer, I can’t find my ID, my car, I mean my house, burned down. Let me riffle through all my worldly possessions in the back seat to find it for you.” And subsequently, “Sorry I’m late, boss, I got pulled over on my way. Also, my house burned down.”

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memoir, 2016SLMTatiana Ryckman
But I’m Wanted

April’s lips are chapped. They’re rough and scrape against mine, and the taste of nicotine fills my mouth. Her fingers are wrapping around the tendrils of my mullet. And she pulls my hair a lot harder than I expected. It’s my first kiss. Well, the first one I count, anyway.

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memoir, 2016SLMSteven LaFond