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 hate you,” I say with a vitriol that I don’t really feel and never will. My dad’s face is turning red from choking back his chortles. The neon green paper full of words has now fallen to the floor, and I pray that the parakeet hopping along the carpet finds his way to it and tears it to pieces like he has the edges of my books.
Read MoreThe week I got back home to New York after spending my junior year of college in England, two unexpected things happened. I got a phone call offering me an internship in Manhattan that I’d been rejected for months earlier and my dad was diagnosed with a brain tumor.
Read MoreA jumble of buildings squatted some distance away, dark, and low. Not a sight I, at my ripe old age of eight, imagined part of Dad’s homeland. Funny how things stick in your mind, from all those years ago, still sharp now, from so many decades ago. A time of our walkabout. Through ominous towns dotted trying to overwhelm desert landscapes. So different from down south coast dairy farm where I grew up. Possible to glimpse pieces of blue-gray Ocean away in divots between hills.
Read MoreA small engraved bell with a clapper sat on the teak coffee table in the room where my father lay dying. He no longer had the strength to call my mother so this was the instrument he used to summon her. I heard it from the kitchen and went into the living room.
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