On Wonder
When I tell people that the high schoolers painted a building, cleaned up weeds and replaced broken doors, people ask me what the building is for. “Nothing,” I say.
Ocean Breathes Salty
So on back. Back to the music video. Back to the lyrics that make the video all worthwhile. It’s not that I’m expecting everyone to get this.
Left Behind in Grand Rapids
I forgot that figuring out life does not always mean getting a job or going to grad school.
Dear Lauren, Love Lauren
The following is a completely fictional recorded conversation between my past and present selves. It is transcribed as it was spoken and it is also not real. 18-year-old Lauren: Dear 25-year-old Lauren, I hope you’re no longer miserable. Please tell me that...
Tiny White Moments
Reaching through the grated door, I run a fingertip along the tiny white foreleg of a tiny white lamb curled on the straw inside. He slid into the world less than a week ago beside his glossy black sister.
The Golden Fool
But make no mistake, ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you’ is a flawed statement. It would only work in a dreamlike utopia, where every person exhibits an identical preference and attitude—a scenario I truly believe would bore me to death.
I’m scared she gonna die
I don’t do anything for the man who bangs on the church door and tells me about his probation and court date in Bremerton an hour and a half away and the company that let him go after thirty years to save themselves a retirement plan and the chronic pain in his shoulder and the botched knee surgery and how he just needs eight dollars and ten cents for the ferry or else they’ll throw him back in jail over a lousy eight dollars and ten cents and could I please, please, I know you’re good guy, please just give me eight dollars and ten cents for the ferry?
Hard as Flint
DEQ spokesman Brad Wurfel stepped down too, probably because who wants to talk to the media, the public, the citizens of Flint, and the POTUS after your department “misinterpreted the water safety regulations?”
To Find the Place Where Spirits Romp, Head To White Cloud’s Dungeon Swamp
Suddenly, I heard Kevin gasp. We stumbled blindly toward his voice until echolocation led us to a vine-covered mausoleum. The script was crumbling, but the names were unmistakable.
To Catch A Train
I took a train every morning in Budapest to a little café called Budapest Bagel: a bar and a bagel shop where I somehow received college credit to write short stories and read novels following a longstanding expatriate tradition.
