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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On the darkest dark night of winter, one small light marks the start of the festival.
This darkest night is the longest night, too. In winter, in Maine, daylight can last maybe eight hours—if you’re lucky. And as the moon of the month of Kislev wanes from quarter, to sliver, to new, the Chanukah festival begins.
Read MoreWhat was said: The cancer has returned, Bob. Your pelvis lit up like a Christmas tree on the PET scan. There’s nothing more to do, but go home for hospice.
What it felt like: We’ve scheduled your plane crash, Bob. Prepare to depart at Gate 7D.
Read MoreIt was the four of us— me, Hannah, Aaron and Kyle— sitting around in Hannah’s living room after a board game night that probably ended with me making Aaron so mad he packed everything away. I had lots of tricks for that. Like moving my little piece off the board when we played Monopoly as a protest of capitalism, or reclaiming America for my Indigenous ancestors in Risk, and then refusing to conquer any other continent. Hannah and Aaron had only been dating a year and some change at that point, so pissing him off was still a bit of a sport for me. Kyle and I had already broken up.
Read MoreThe first time I knew my parents loved each other was when my father Hoovered ants off my mother’s precious Christmas cake. Granted, it’s no ordinary cake. It’s a fruitcake my British mother makes two months before the holidays, injecting it weekly with dark rum to keep it moist.
Read MoreIt is hours past my bedtime when my mother shakes me out of a deep sleep. I might be as young as eight or as old as ten, but in my memory, I am nine: the exact age when Mom is the center of my tiny universe. I don’t ask questions; I simply crawl out from underneath my Little Mermaid comforter and follow her up the stairs.
Read MoreThere he was after seven years, walking out the door of the store just as I was walking in. After a second of eye contact, but no words, we kept going. Speaking wouldn’t have been appropriate. Following behind him was the woman he unbeknownst to me was still in relationship with when we dated.
Read More“So dear, how did we get into this mess? Tripped over a rug? Bathtub fall?” Spoken with that cheery disengagement nurses reserve for those whose grey hair betrays their moldering minds.
Read MoreThe two-seater Toyota truck rushed through the darkness of early morning in Fayetteville, N.C. We were on our way to the hospital on Fort Bragg’s Army base. My pain made sitting up monumental, whimpering inevitable. I was aware of every centimeter of my body and yet, somehow, also entirely outside of myself. God, it hurt.
Read More“Did she really say that?” I was shocked, yet I wasn’t. There was a strange quality to my awareness those days, like the water coming to shore and retreating again. I was listening to myself through insubstantial headphones, muted and tilted slightly.
My mama nodded. She kept tinkering about the kitchen, pressing the button on the coffee machine and side-stepping back to the sink. I watched her in silence for long moments, dangling my feet from the bar stool with the nervous energy that took hold of me while I was mulling over my grandmother’s statement.
Read MoreMy eventual honesty with Mama started with a Laura Ashley comforter. I was going away for the summer after 10th grade as a dance major at the Georgia Governor’s Honors Program and could decorate a space entirely for myself. I envisioned decorating my side of the college dormitory in all Laura Ashley, as I had seen in the J.C. Penny catalog with matching floral bedding and draperies. I wanted to have matching things like that, not like my bedroom at home with homemade curtains and a white-painted desk that Daddy built. I decided that a thick, floral, luxurious Laura Ashley comforter would be my official welcome to adulthood, one that smelled sweet and felt cool to the touch.
Read MoreOn the day that you, fifteen, tell your mother you are sorry for saying words that hurt her, you will stand on the bottom tread but one of the hush-carpeted stairs that run through the middle of the two-story house. She will stand in the doorway to the blue dining room, which leads to the kitchen from which you’ve called her. She will furrow her brow, tilt her head, and say Thank you for saying that, then look down and wring her hands, or maybe a kitchen towel. Next, not meeting your eyes, she will heft a hurt into the air, heavy under the weight of double negative: This doesn’t mean you’re not still grounded.
Read MoreWe had a plan: if it happened at home, ostensibly in our bathroom toilet, because we were optimists even in the midst of that personal tragedy, I would not try to retrieve the fetus. Our midwife had suggested that we could have a ceremony, but that didn’t feel right for us. We were sad, collectively, often in entirely different ways, but we didn’t feel
particularly in need of a ritual. Instead, I would just flush it, send it away, a subterranean passage between what we had imagined and what was actually happening, the unlikely closure we needed. I am a girl who knows how to stick to a plan. And so I did.
Fear squeezes me into a sieve of silence. My ears defy the tv’s sounds and the Loud Mouth’s babble. The fluorescent lights are too bright. I can see every dirty scuff mark on the yellowing tile. How long do we sit here? My eyes have been on the floor but I glance up to see Loud Mouth’s face tilted in my direction, her tongue and lips flapping. She is talking to me. She is asking a question. Her words stretch like tendrils of flame across the room. They lick my ears, jolting my cochlea into submission.
Read MoreThere’s a phrase I use to utter at parties in my 20s to make people laugh: Chuck Norris touched me inappropriately. Chuck Norris touched me inappropriately, I would say, with a twinkle in my eyes, a raise of my eyebrow, and a seductive grin, begging my friends to ask for more details.
Read MoreI feel animal. My whole body runs hot, with a fever. I am bent over, crouched. I am feral. I could scratch at any moment. I shit constantly. Blood runs between my legs. I am sweating. I feel everything, swelling. I want a cave to crawl in. To die in.
Read MoreA patch of muddied red clings to the bright yellow cloth. Its died cotton expanse proven
durable through the years. Threads coil from green trim, an accidental tassel that continues to
unwind despite sharp tugging. The cloth molds nicely to my body, telling of consistent wear, yet
the double-stitch lining suggests its continued usefulness.
My period and I had spent 8-years apart, ever since my first IUD. In truth, I hadn’t thought about it much. And I didn’t know then but in less than a week I would be reunited with both my period and a forgotten feeling.
Read MoreI don’t get my period.
I’m not sick. I’m not pregnant. I’m not taking birth control. Its stoppage was simply brought on by my gender.
I am a man. A man who used to get periods before I started hormone replacement therapy.
Read MoreI don’t even know if I can call what happens a period. Period suggests a finite amount of time, a decisive ending, a stop. And so I suppose that if I interpret the meaning as stopping the blood that continues to leak, unabated, from my uterus, with every major break-up, then yes, it’s my period, but my period on steroids, an energizer bunny of a period, a veritable river so robust I can never fathom where it is all coming from.
Read MoreOn the day of my best friend’s funeral, I received a friendly text from a colleague asking how I was enjoying my summer. Not knowing I was in despair, I did not want to distress them. So, I replied with a number of clichéd nautical terms. I felt like a ship without an anchor. I was lost at sea, set adrift. This proximity to water, without the sight of land, creates disorientation and resignation. My early grief came with a strange apathy born from a newfound loneliness and struggle. Will power and the habit of duty kept me tethered to the deck. I hoped I was not at risk of falling overboard. I am not a strong swimmer.
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