Monthly Theme

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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Split

Split

I met Dennis when he was in high school, I was in college, and we were both teaching English at a religious summer camp in Croatia. He came with a group from Oklahoma, including the team leadership. I signed up with a friend from college. We had a few days of training in Chicago before flying. The all-White male leadership set the tone for us, as we sat in a stuffy hotel meeting room, on the third floor, with closed windows on a windy day. There they asked us to write what we thought our lives would have been like if we had not found Christianity. Was it a trick question?

Missed ConnectionsGuest UserOctober 26, 2021religion, missed connections, relationshipsComment

Letter

Letter

Once, I read a letter I wrote to you out loud in a slam poetry open mic. I wasn’t intending on speaking that day but now that I look back, I probably saw myself in the poets, songwriters, and artists who were barely older than me but just as weary: They’ve spent half their young lives chasing love or at least the thrill of writing about it, and you know me, you’ve always known me. Who am I to deny myself a group like this one?

Missed ConnectionsGuest UserOctober 25, 2021missed connections, love letter, love, relationshipsComment

First on Scene

First on Scene

“Look what I found,” my husband, Theo, says with a sheepish grin as he slides a red notebook across the kitchen counter.

“What’s that?” Our five-year-old son, Julian, points at the notebook, decorated with firetrucks and glimmering hearts.

First Date StoriesJulia NusbaumSeptember 30, 2021my first date, love letter, love story, love at first sight Comment

Morton's Steak House

Morton's Steak House

"Can't tell if it's a good omen, or a bad omen, but there's a storm a-brewing." That's how my sister Betsy greeted me the next morning, along with a fresh mug of coffee.

"Well, good morning to you, too."

First Date StoriesJulia NusbaumSeptember 29, 2021my first date, mid-life crisis, Divorce Comment

Extraordinary Ordinary

Extraordinary Ordinary

I have been on many, many dates, including an abundance of first and only dates. I thought I had experienced most first date repertoires—coffee dates and dinner dates, exciting dates and boring dates, dates to the theater and dates to the comedy club, dates that led to relationships and dates that came to screeching halts midway. I’d been on first dates with sixty dollar steaks and first dates with six dollar burgers. I’d been on first dates with lawyers and professors and police officers and firefighters. I’d even been on first dates with married people, unbeknownst to me, of course.

First Date StoriesGuest UserSeptember 28, 2021my first date, love, nature, relationships Comments

“Hang Out”

“Hang Out”

I moved to a new city where I knew no one in the fall of 2016. I was twenty-three at the time and had graduated college the year before. Now I was settling in this new place with a new, real adult job. Like many people in many places, I turned to dating apps for entertainment. To make friends, to find dates, to explore the new city. Sometimes it was for a physical connection, but sometimes that was just a bonus if it happened at all. It was more about creating moments of connection, even if they were brief.

First Date StoriesGuest UserSeptember 27, 2021my first date, relationships, friendship Comment

An Abecedarian of Loss

An Abecedarian of Loss

abecedarian twenty-six letters, each one a compact unit of communication, a twisted riddle, a maze of red tape from well-lit offices; the only means of containing my sorrow now that all I have left of my brother are memories and letters.

GriefJulia NusbaumAugust 27, 2021grief, death of a sibling, Recovery, regret, poetryComment

Keep a Light On

Keep a Light On

Merlin used to like to listen to music. He’d crawl up on the bed and sit next to me, while something played from my phone to try and calm my aching nerves, even though he couldn’t hear or see very well, with no teeth and no claws. I think in a way he could feel the vibration of the sounds through his body, like a purr resonating through my bones whenever he would sit on my chest to go to sleep. It’s like he knew I needed the comfort, like he knew I needed the consolation only a one-eyed cat could provide in a period of dark depression, bipolar mania, or skin-picking compulsion.

GriefGuest UserAugust 27, 2021cats, pets, grief, lossComment

Love's Pressure Valve

Love's Pressure Valve

Once again grief knocks down my door, tosses the furniture, grabs my throat, and slams me up against the wall. Grief has no manners. It’s not polite, or thoughtful, or kind. Grief is a punch to the gut and then another. It doesn’t stop when you’ve had enough, when you cry uncle, when you tell it you did your best and to leave you the fuck alone. It’s like birth, noisy and painful and messy, no way out but through.

GriefJulia NusbaumAugust 26, 2021grief, death of a parent, death of a friend, death of a pet, dogs Comments

Where Do All the Poppies Go?

Where Do All the Poppies Go?

I thought that when you left, it would get easier. The pain of yesterday still cuts through every bone—all the flesh that reminds me of my mortality, all the flesh that reminds me of you. All of my flesh and bone that belongs to you—that is you. They say there is no greater love than the love we receive from our grandmother. That never felt true to me until there was no more love to receive.

GriefGuest UserAugust 26, 2021grief, grandmother, granddaughterComment

Plots

Plots

My mother’s family is buried in a little cemetery at the edge of Magnolia, Iowa, population 175. It’s about forty minutes north of Omaha. “Don’t blink or you’ll miss it,” my dad used to say. Mom’s parents lay there, encircled by generations of relatives. Most had worked the surrounding land, their farms scattered across the Missouri River Valley.

GriefJulia NusbaumAugust 25, 2021grief, death postive, death of a parent, death of a friendComment

Dead Sister Club

Dead Sister Club

Twenty years ago I was awakened in the middle of the night by a call from my father. My sister Shelley had been hit in a head-on vehicle collision by an elderly man who had driven the wrong way on the interstate for twenty miles. Shelley had been Christmas shopping in Springfield that night and was heading home at the time of the accident. Hazy, I asked my dad, “Did Shelley make it?” The most cavernous “no” I’ll ever hear in my life followed.

GriefGuest UserAugust 25, 2021grief, sister, love, loss Comment

How to Host a New-Age-y Wake

How to Host a New-Age-y Wake

To prepare for a friend’s wake, you will need a good, sturdy, circling-the-wagon group of friends because, even if your friend has family, she will still need her friends. Over the years, she has gathered you up like so many buckeyes and strung you together. Now, you will need each other. Together, you must attend to the details, like where the body will be displayed. If the dying person wants to be placed in a casket, you can buy one or, if someone, for example, the spouse of the dying person is good with his hands, he can whip one up from some slabs of pine, then store it in the tool shed next to the lawnmower and kayaks and mountain bikes.

GriefJulia NusbaumAugust 24, 2021grief, friendship, death of a friend, love letterComment

Grief Is a Book You Can’t Put Down

Grief Is a Book You Can’t Put Down

In 1994, in cold and damp London, in a Waterstones bookstore, the memoir And When Did You Last See Your Father? perched on a paperback display. Three weeks after my father’s death from pancreatic cancer, I had gone to England to start my junior year in college studying abroad.

GriefGuest UserAugust 24, 2021grief, father, Daughter Comments

Even Home

Even Home

Front Yard

The oak tree out front sprawls, and the driveway sleeps contentedly under a blanket of its yellow pollen as we park, leaving tire marks through the fallen powder. My dad sings along to Lynyrd Skynyrd as we pile out of the car. Dad shreds an air guitar, making my brother and I laugh while my mom rolls her eyes.

GriefJulia NusbaumAugust 23, 2021community, grief, childhood, addictionComment

Star Stuff

The story starts more than 4.6 billion years ago. Somewhere in the Local Group, the cluster of galaxies that the Milky Way lives in, a star died. It might not have been a massive star—maybe only five suns big. But it grew too big to support itself, and so it burned out. The outsides exploded, throwing dust and star matter into the universe—a supernova—and the core collapsed in on itself. The engine of its heart gave one last pump and ceased to exist. It left behind a dense neutron star, and a cloud of debris.

GriefGuest UserAugust 23, 2021grief, mother, Daughter Comment

Dear Trish

Dear Trish

Dear Trish,

It was so annoying how Marlee slid on her jeans, buttoned them easily, and pulled a cream-colored, cable-knit sweater over her head, ready to party. She didn’t wonder if the pants were too tight, if they made her look fat, if the shirt covered the soft rolls of her stomach.

Dear Past MeGuest UserJuly 30, 2021dear past me, mistake, Self esteem, love letter Comments

Dear Melina

Dear Melina

Dear Melina,

I write this love-letter to you when I am old enough to be your grandmother, and when Grandma was my age. Time is a funny thing. It unspools before us and then folds in on itself to be carried forward into the memories of body and soul. You are eleven years old in this memory. You are a child on the cusp of womanhood, and I am a woman on the cusp of old age.

Dear Past MeGuest UserJuly 29, 2021dear past me, self love, Finding myself, Self esteem Comments

Dear Angel

Dear Angel

At this time, your purpose is unclear. But eventually, it will be apparent why you are here on Earth. I know every day is routine – your forty-five-minute commute to your job, the mundane workday, the chaotic drive back home through traffic to smoke weed in your living room, then eat something and fall asleep.

Dear Past MeGuest UserJuly 28, 2021love letter, love yourself, love letters, dear past meComment

Dear Deb

Dear Deb

Dear Teenage Deb,

Coming of age in the 1970s, you sometimes marvel at the inconceivable notion of one day living in the twenty-first century, of being forty-three (ancient!), when chimes clang and horns blare, welcoming a fresh numeral on humanity’s odometer. However, you also doubt the probability of living to the year 2000, since the Rapture is bound to occur at any moment.

Dear Past MeGuest UserJuly 27, 2021dear past me, religion, self care Comment