Photo by Jakub Hałun, CC BY-NC 2.0 DEED The comparison began when the doctors recommended Mike’s mom take experimental drugs to defeat her disease. At the time Mike had been reading about the eastern front during World War Two. So, after the drugs failed, it seemed...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
