I’ve been seeing a lot of talk lately about these short days of winter, how the sudden darkness catches us off guard, triggers some primal urge to hibernate, makes some of our brains turn to sad mush and others settle into a restful routine. Now that the winter solstice has…

I don’t think my cat knows that she’s keeping me tethered to reality. I feel her soft head resting on my slippers as I write. She would rather sleep on my feet than in the three different beds I’ve bought for her. I’m honored even when she suddenly wakes up…

What is Mariela doing? Who is she, really? What does she want? These are the questions I’m supposed to ask myself about my protagonist. What makes her different than anyone else? What makes me? Suddenly I can’t remember what makes her tick, what makes her cry or smile or want…

The house across the street is haunted. It has to be. The sharp peaks of the roof, topped with ornate spires, reach eerily through the trees toward the darkening sky. Every window looks like it could hold the ghostly outline of a woman in white, or a child waving, or…

Every time I liked a boy, I knew what to do. And my worst fear was that maybe I would say, “I like you,” and he would say, “Oh, I don’t like you like that.” Embarrassing, but not the end of the world. But when I liked a girl, I…

I want to be honest. I haven’t been okay. And I have been avoiding the process of working toward okay. In the never-ending quest for perfection and with an unhealthy fear of failure in my head, I have spent the last several months pretending my problems don’t exist. Pretending reunion…

It’s the English proverb we’ve all heard: Blood is thicker than water. Our society takes this as a given, for the most part. Family ties are stronger than any bonds we can form with anyone else. We are beholden to those people whose blood runs in our veins, more so than we are to even our closest friends. This sounds great, at…

The wedding is approaching. It carries a suitcase bursting at the seams. I have no choice but to unpack all the family, heritage, history and expectations that come spilling forth. Everyone swears it will be okay, that all those pressures will fade away when I look at Noor. I can’t tell you how much I want this to be true. I’m afraid…

I have taken issue with my body for as long as I can remember. I’ve been thin, I’ve been chubby, I’ve been fat. But I’ve rarely ever felt good enough. Growing up in Southern California beach towns, I have always been aware of the cultural obsession with thinness and “fitness.”…