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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You haven’t been home in a while. How long, I can’t quite say, but long enough for the stillness to solidify. Dust amasses discretely, until one day it forms a visible shell. I hear you brushing it off surfaces, coughing, groaning in disgust. There are many surfaces. But you’re determined.
Read MoreUnder a dripping canopy of tall oaks, I stumbled around a New Jersey cemetery scanning names engraved on headstones. I knew my father was there somewhere, but exactly where was a mystery. No one from the cemetery had returned my calls, the office was deserted, and there wasn’t a soul in sight to ask. There was nothing to do but start at one end and amble up and down the walkways that snaked through the graves.
Read MoreBy the first day of grade twelve, I can’t handle living in this shithole town anymore. Summer: a blur of house parties, handsy boys and men, and sleepless nights. I butt my cigarette against the brown brick façade, march into the guidance counsellor’s office and say, “If I can’t finish first term, I quit.” I graduate in January.
Read MoreClaremont, California, circa 2005 (or anytime between 1955 and 2008):
My father tells me my mother smiled at something he said today. To mark the occasion, I take this mental snapshot, underexposed, milky black and white. She is silhouetted against the window in front of the herb garden she has let die.
Read More“To tell or not tell?” I have been grappling with this question for years. After looking at it from all angles and analyzing the potential consequences of both options, I have finally concluded that it is best to “tell.” The question has to do with whether I disclose an important family secret, revealed to me by my mother ten years ago, or keep it to myself, which will amount to burying it for good, never to surface again.
Read MoreAs my parents’ only child, I always listened for bits of grown-up news or gossip, especially when they spoke in hushed tones or in “code.” Without siblings to distract me away from the business of the adults, I was often privy to all sorts of dirt. But, whenever I asked a question about something I overheard, my mother shamed me back to childhood with comments like, “Little pitchers have big ears!” or even better, in Italian, “Fatti gli affari tuoi!”
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 MoreSummers lingered, with pancakes for breakfast and sometimes for lunch, too. Mom peeled carrots and left them in a Pyrex bowl of water on the kitchen table. I’d grab one for a snack, running through the house and out to the backyard, where the fun happened.
Read MoreHow many Seventeen articles do I need to read to get it right? “The makeup should look natural, like it’s not there. The idea is to enhance, not pronounce.” That’s what the people in the article say.
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 MoreI stared at the bead of blood. A perfect red pearl on my almost-shoulder.
“I’ll get something for that,” said the nurse. “Here, put some pressure on it.” She pressed a cotton ball against my skin, and I held it there with my pointer finger.
Read MoreI finally flossed my teeth. It was the first time in ten days. I moved about my bathroom with excited anticipation of normal days to come, suddenly aware of the overflowing garbage pail and grime in the cracks of the backsplash. Blood pooled delicately between the enamel of my teeth, reminding me of yet another way I had failed.
Read MoreI learned about menstruation from sea monkeys when I was eight or nine. Since then, I haven’t given my body much thought. Maybe that time in Sicily, when I flew off my bike and skinned my knee and elbow, leaving a scar. Or perhaps when my legs sprouted hair and everyone in the sixth grade shaved before my mom let me. But now that we’re trying to have a baby, it’s all I can think about.
Read MoreChapter 1: February 1972
The brown stain in my white, cotton underwear looks like a crime scene. But it has to be a mistake, a trick of the fluorescent lighting in the bathroom. I wash my hands raw and clunk back out into the dining hall, my rented ski boots slamming against the cement floor.
Read MoreYou’re startled when a girl from your homeroom hugs you from behind. She wears more mature perfume than you’re allowed to buy, and you worry her makeup might rub off on the back of your black shirt. Her scent is sweet and gag-inducing in the narrow, yellow school hallway. As you both continue walking in this odd double-step, she pulls you slightly backwards toward the nurse’s office.
Read MoreMy parents raised my brother, Mark, and me in Raleigh, North Carolina, an airplane flight from any relatives. My mother’s sister lived in Oakland, and her brother lived in Los Angeles. We took one family vacation to each during my childhood, because saving money for the future was more important than knowing our cousins.
Read MoreI’d waited an eternity, but I’m finally holding my brand-new Deutsch Reisepass. It’s stiff and unyielding, unlike my mother’s and grandparents’, which are worn, faded, and pliable. If I handle those old passports too roughly, the prominent swastika and red J on the cover may turn to dust in my hands. From dust to dust.
Read MoreWhen I returned to Tehran for the first time, twenty years after my family’s escape from the Islamic Theocracy, I was in love. I can’t write an exhaustive list of what I was in love with, because I was in love with everything. I was in love with the taxi drivers. The surly ones. The quiet ones. The inquisitive.
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.
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