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.
Interested in sponsoring one of our monthly themes? Check out our media kit.
“Like, would that string really have stayed on her finger for fourteen years?” Lindsey asks, and I laugh in the carefree manner typically brought about by cheap vodka.
“Well, it’s magic string,” I respond, “because it’s infused with love.”
We continue to watch, a bowl of popcorn between us, buzzing on the fruit-flavored Smirnoff I am finally able to buy legally now that I’ve just turned twenty-one. It is summer; the semester has ended; we are each home from college.
Read MoreMy father was a career military man and did three tours overseas. Each time he returned home from deployments his skill at attacking others in darkness was sharper and keener. He drank heavily and became easily enraged, used the skills he had mastered to be quick and precise when striking out at the object of his ire. The only daughter in the family, I was not spared the violence inflicted upon my four brothers. My father did not discriminate in his lashing out. My disadvantage was the possession of gloriously long dark hair that both parents insisted I grow.
Read MoreI grew up in the exalted spaces of a United Methodist Church. Dad was a pastor who, after graduating from seminary in Ohio, drove with my mother across the country to the far west of Washington, with six-month-old me strapped into a bassinet behind the front seat. In the early days of memory, I enjoyed singing hymns, drinking grape juice from thimble cups at communion, and helping Mom entertain parishioners in groups according to their last names for lunches in our home, where she served vegetable soup and black bottom cupcakes until she’d run through all the letters of the alphabet.
Read MoreI am so sorry everyone deconstructs and changes your beautiful,
complicated name. The pieces of your soft “ca” and lopping “o”
rebranded into southern alternatives like Caroline or Coraline or Carol
or even Carly once, after the doctor said the only Carolyn he’d ever heard
At Indian Rocks Beach, we stay in an oceanside ranch house. It is small, flat to the ground, and the walls are painted sea green. The living room is covered with sandy, shaggy orange carpet. We are vacationing with my dad’s family: his parents, his sister, her many, blonde children. Absolute chaos.
Read MoreI hated gym and those one-piece blue gym suits. They had the self-contained waistband, the baggy shorts, the snap front, and were a pain to climb into. They made even the most glamorous girls in phys ed look like little blue sausages. A chubby fifteen-year-old, I tried to stay out of that ridiculous blue get-up whenever possible.
Read More“El Wacko is snorting coke in the bathroom,” Daniel shouted. He stormed into his parents’ room. I studied my godbrother, round eyes and mouth open, from my seat on the nightstand. My back pressed against rows and rows of vitamins, all promising weight loss, wishing to be anywhere but here.
Read MoreDr. Thompson was feeling my breasts. Sitting on the table in his exam room with my gown dropped to my waist, I was embarrassed to have him touch me. I was embarrassed just to be at the appointment. My body developed curves early. In seventh grade, when most girls had flat chests, I wore a C-cup bra and hid in the corner of the locker room to change before and after gym class. By fifteen, my 34D chest was a health concern.
Read MoreA few months after moving to the U.S. from India, on a weekly trip to the San Jose Flea Market, I walked into a store selling art reprints and found an artist whose work would take me by the hand and show me around our new home.
Read More
