Girls Like Us
Girls Like Us

In purple light of my daughter’s first concert, lyrics wrangle with all the fears, hopes, and possibilities of growing up. Light-up stars glow into the darkness as pictures of the artist as a young girl flicker behind her. A young pop star sits at the baby grand, singing into a purple haze. I glance over at my girl, singing along, and in her profile, I see her at age twelve. I see myself at twelve too. I remember and imagine her at twenty, all of the ages I have been and she will be. A little girl voice calls out to us, and tears well up as we search for ourselves there, among the stars. 

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Julia NusbaumComment
Robin's House
Robin's House

The sun was a golden coin that afternoon — if only it had never set. For her 10th birthday, Robin’s mom let her have a friend over for a sleepover. She chose me. Robin’s grandma came, and so did her uncle. He was very nice.

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True StoriesJulia NusbaumComment
ママに伝えたい事。(The Things I Want to Tell My Mom.)
ママに伝えたい事。(The Things I Want to Tell My Mom.)

This is about my mama because I’m too stubborn, too proud, too self-conscious to tell these things to her in person. I’ll backpack around with luggage until I gain enough substance to face it head-on. For now, I’m simply going to make excuses and say that I’m too green to face this— pride(?) Perhaps sheepish-ness is a more suited term. English doesn’t wield such a single term that encases this feeling to its extent.

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True StoriesMolly Stitesfamily, mother, growing up Comment
The Dead End Love's Playlist
The Dead End Love's Playlist

I met you by the river the first time while the mist rose from the banks like it was trying to change elements. You were more fun to run from the cops with than anyone else I’d met, and man you made me reckless. I never had to test my legs though, the minivan did it for us while Jerry blasted through the blown speakers in the cornfield. You walked 2,000 miles up the country on trail and wrote me letters back home while I watched, sidelined. I could have walked myself from Georgia to Maine with you, but it was your own pilgrimage to undertake, your season spending nights under a green tarp.

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True StoriesKristina Buschtravel, dating, art, love, music Comment
Pieces
Pieces

Just after the pandemic, I went to New York City with my aunt Mimi. We had planned the trip as a way for me to learn everything I could about my mother, who died thirty-five years ago from an aggressive form of breast cancer. It was the hottest day on record for the month of May and we sat in an air-conditioned restaurant in Greenwich Village.

Mimi listed things my mother loved: dancing, parties, fashion, Bailey’s Irish Cream.

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True StoriesKristina Buschfamily, traveling, trauma Comments
Oreo
Oreo

I do not remember the name of the first child, buck-toothed, big-eyed, who called me an Oreo—a racial slur meaning someone who is black on the outside; white on the inside. I do not remember the name of the second, either. I remember sticky summers in blistering Birmingham, Alabama, legs itching from the long, prickly grass and perpetual mosquito bites. I remember waiting for night fall, the symphonious synth-sounds of crickets, the steady flicker of lightning bugs. I remember sitting on the crumbling porch of Bunk’s house, alone. Distanced from cousins whose Bama dialect compelled them a unique kind of elide, swallowing the sharp point of R’s, so when they said (speaking of me) She talks like a white girl, it came out sounding like gull. I remember biting back tears, picturing myself; head of a girl, body of a seagull, grey wings flapping, soaring above the stifling Hooper City ghetto with its collection of shotgun houses in various stages of dilapidation, far, far away to AnywhereButHere, anywhere the colour of my skin wouldn’t define me.

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True StoriesJulia Nusbaum Comments
I'll Make the Ambrosia
I'll Make the Ambrosia

Losing my mother to Alzheimer’s disease feels like my teeth are being yanked out slowly, painfully, one by one. Our favorite things to do together wither away along with her brain cells. I try to cook with her, but her culinary skills have dwindled to putting the pickled beets on a relish tray. 

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Molly Stites Comments
Vern
Vern

There is a feeling I get when I travel alone. The moment I get to my destination—a hotel or Airbnb—when I walk in the room, roll my suitcase into a corner, and close the door, it hits me. I am hopeful on every trip that I won’t feel it this time, but I always do. My chest and stomach get tight. I can’t catch a full breath. There is a sense of dread and impending doom. And emptiness so loud one might think it is the thing I’ve come to visit. As if it lives right there in that room and has been waiting for me since the last time we saw each other. 

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True StoriesJulia Nusbaumloss, pets, griefComment