The Monthly Theme Essays are a collection of essays written each month on a predetermined theme. These essays are always published during the last week of the month. To submit a Monthly Theme Essay check out our upcoming themes.
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I came home to wisps of white paper blowing through the screened-in porch like feathers in a chicken coop. Rosie, the rescue puppy, was sitting on haunches with head bowed and tail wagging sheepishly, white exclamation points in the black spots of her scruffy fur. The trail of paper led from the porch, through the dog door, to the living room floor, to the black leather cover of my grandmother’s Bible, her name in gold on the lower corner.
Read MoreI have learned not to get burned.
The year that I turn sixteen, which is a very long year, I often work the opening shift at McDonald’s. Other than babysitting, this is my first job, and I take it quite seriously. Twenty hours a week; more in the summer. I have no license, so my mother drives me, both of us heavy with the want of sleep.
Read More“How fat do I look in this shirt?” my mother asked me, grimacing as she stared at herself in the department store’s tri-fold mirror. All three versions of her fussed in unison with the shirt’s delicate buttons.
By the time I was in the sixth grade, this was not an unusual question. “Mother,” I started, my voice lingering on the last syllable, dragging the er into a nasal whine. “You look fine.”
Read MoreI couldn’t make myself heard for fifty years. Not even the boy could hear me, the boy I lived inside. My vocal anatomy worked fine—larynx, mouth, lungs beneath my breasts—I just didn’t have the words. Nobody did, not in the sixties. I had to resort to signals. Most of them he missed.
Read MoreI spotted you leaning against a pillar under the Washington Square arch, in men’s clothes, and with a bigger frame. You were stocky, and your face seemed wider. You’d gained weight, and your straight blond hair was dyed blue and cut short, like a Marine.
Read MoreFive.
A girl finds herself standing with her cousins, wondering what she will wear for dress-up at Nana and Pops’s house. The dazzling range of options is almost overwhelming. Who will she be today? Through the animal costumes and the police uniforms, something catches her eye. A stunning red dress—the kind women wear to fancy parties she’s seen on TV. That’s who she wants to be.
Read MoreHe made his way around the seminar table to stand at the podium and present the paper reflecting his semester-long wrestling match with challenges to everything he had been raised to accept without questioning. “He” is a young white man – a law student – who looked as if plucked from Hollywood Central Casting for a crowd scene of stereotypic “Bubbas” attending a rally of the Ku Klux Klan.
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