home from work hungry drained something easy tv a quick snack bag needs unpacking laundry put away dishwasher unloaded reloaded I scurry half finish one task distracted by a new mail on the counter unmade bed books everywhere make it to the fridge open the door nothing leftover See this piece featured in the published issue of Orichalcum Tower Review .

Marco and I walk the long hallways of O’Hare airport and round the many corners before arriving at the back of the customs line. We groan as we realize how long we have to wait. Maybe 20 minutes passes and my dad texts my brother and me. He tells us that Mom fainted at a funeral she was attending and he is on his way to see her in the hospital. His texts are always so formal, like an email at work. I scoff and thank him for the update. My brother reminds him to keep us update

This is hard for me to write for a lot of reasons: reasons that have made it difficult for me to write anything about my mom since she died, no matter how hard or how many times I’ve tried, reasons I could mention, but I won’t because that’s not what this is about. This is about missing my mom. I miss the way I could cry to her. I never had to have a reason to bawl in front of my mom. She always asked what was wrong, but a sufficient answer could have been, “I don’t know,” wh

I’ve been pushing myself to enter writing contests this year and I came across one that required participants to write a love letter to themselves. There were several rules including that the letter couldn’t mention anyone else by name and it had to be less than 800 words. Another requirement was the participants had to be a member of the community hosting the contest and it was just enough money for me to change my mind. Fortunately, I only discovered the fee after I had wri

I’ll let you in on a secret: I have no college debt. Months before I had officially graduated, I made my final payment on my student loans. While I am proud of myself, I do realize that there are many factors that contributed to this achievement. I would like to say that it’s all due to work ethic and making smart financial decisions, but that is simply not the case. After all, how fiscally responsible is it to attend a private, Catholic university in Chicago when I could hav