Of Land and Of Water

Of Land and Of Water

Photo by kashishArtandGallery / shutterstock For as long as I can remember, my mother had wanted to mother a son. She dressed me in blue every chance she got. Even before I was expected, she bought baby boy clothes off thelas around Tariq Road and Hyderi. She could...
Lanternfly

Lanternfly

Photo by Ritu Manoj Jethani / Shutterstock.com There is no love for the lanternfly. The profligate planthopper, the habitual hitchhiker, who arrived, unbidden, from across the tempest-tost sea. A shipping container stowaway, the color of a dirty old newspaper. The...
Question of Survival

Question of Survival

The sun sets over an endless sea, flashing a mysterious green, while a purple squall stomps on the horizon. I stand in the middle of a sandy island the size of a graveyard, and just as flat. This is exactly what I want after the last ten months—time alone on a...
Antakya, Before

Antakya, Before

I arrived in Antakya with my partner during Türkiye’s kurban bayramı, a week in the thick of summer that everyone takes off to celebrate Eid al-Adha. The city was sleepy and quiet, with heat rising up from the cobblestone streets. After a twelve-hour night bus from...
Freya

Freya

Photo by Sandy Wicks, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons In the weeks preceding my trip to Oslo, my father insisted I should go and see Freya. Our phone conversations kept returning to the unfortunate walrus, mirroring the ways in which she had ceaselessly returned...
A Menstrual Cup is Highly Effective, Just Ask Walt Whitman

A Menstrual Cup is Highly Effective, Just Ask Walt Whitman

Photo: red mango / Shutterstock.com I check the little blue dots on my phone that tells me I’m ovulating. The dot pulses into a line also called a pre-menstrual migraine. I imagine becoming a fairy because according to Google fairies and elves do not have periods. I...