I’m sitting in a booth at Hole n’ the Wall and my fingers are wrapped around a cold glass of Lone Star poured from a pitcher. A stoned country musician stands on the stage and sings songs about whiskey, and zombies, and love. As I drink my beer, the first sip of alcohol I’ve had [...]
Entries Tagged as ‘Personal Essay’
January 18, 2010
It’s All In Your Head
The best thing about having something wrong with your head is getting to keep your pants on during an MRI. Because it is necessary to only capture images of the brain, the technician leaves half of your body outside the MRI tunnel of mystery. This also allows you to look down and out into the [...]
January 10, 2010
Blame It All On My Roots
Growing up I would take sips of my parents’ beers as they sat and watched us play outside on hot nights among the chirping crickets and locusts. Those tiny tastes tasted gross back then and within seconds I would go back to being endlessly entertained by my simple surroundings.
The year I consumed my first alcoholic [...]
October 11, 2009
The Blood Between Us
Sitting on the front porch with my mom and sister, we are surrounded by a thousand acres of land. When the sun goes down later, distant lights will remind us of where we are. A few miles south is Florence, the town of 1,054 people where I grew up, and farther south is the city [...]
August 27, 2009
Human out of Water
It has been more than three days since I returned from a cruise of the Mexican Caribbean, and I still feel as if I am contained on a vessel that is floating, bobbing, and plowing its way through the vast ocean waters. Somehow it took less than one week for my perception to be altered [...]
June 11, 2009
For the Sake of My Legs
The one by my desk is black, maybe with some speckles of gray. It has wheels and arm rests and a lever to adjust the height. It is touted to be quite ergonomical, and though I find it more comfortable than others, I hate this chair.
During a weekly meeting today, I sat in a different [...]
March 29, 2009
A Most Familiar Feeling
I sit on a blue plastic seat in the laundry mat near my home. As my jeans, underwear, and shirts wash in two machines, I still think about the two dollars and fifty cents cost per load and how much it will cost to wash all of my clothes, towels, and sheets, as well as [...]
July 26, 2008
Ewwchi
The quaint house tucked away on the side of the road seems so discreet and humble — a hidden gem of a restaurant. In the sky above, its reputation looms as a large cloud, invisible yet tangible.
Driving there, I even feel a little nervous. While I chat with my family and boyfriend and weave [...]
May 21, 2008
A Strange Experiment
Crunchy.
Peppery.
Then as my teeth break through the waves of crispy golden breading and penetrate the layers of white flesh, a juicy moistness abounds.
Chicken.
Pollo. Poulet. Gallina. Frango.
My eyelids lay down flat as my mouth moves up and down. I breathe in and out, in and out, deeply through my nose. The juices run over [...]
May 8, 2008
The Salad Bar of Life
“Have I told you my story?” my mother asks me as we walk from Jason’s Deli to her white spaceship-like minivan.
Her voice is soft and excited and shy. I am my mother’s youngest daughter. I am graduating college in two weeks. She will cry. She will say, My baby is grown now.
When I graduated from [...]
