The Wrong of My Birth
Do you ever scratch until you bleed? Do others look at you in disgust because they can't stomach your raw red lesions or the scattering of flaky dust you leave in your wake? Do you know what it feels like…
What Happened On The Mountain
Last week, Daniel and I were invited for a six-person hike from the town Sa Pa to the village Ta Phin. I looked it up on the map. The route seemed to take us on an easy two-hour walk into…
The Best (Dead) Father Stories
Today is my father’s birthday. He died over twenty years ago and far too young. In 2017, I wrote a piece about him that was published in the anthology Sleep is a Beautiful Color. Afterward, SmokeLong Quarterly asked me to…
Bleeding Girls Initiation Ritual
We arrive in the dark at the shortest night and cluster away from the pyre. We are nameless and unsure, bleeding without a wound. We count: forty of us against three of them. Still, we feel outnumbered. We rub our…
Quarantine Stories
We were in Vietnam when the country went into semi-lockdown. For three weeks in April, we hardly left the property. We were allowed to go out for food or medical emergencies, yet preferred to stay quarantined. I was quite anxious…
Wait Till You See Me Dance
With “Likable,” the opening story of Wait Till You See Me Dance, Deb Olin Unferth throws us into the pitfalls of social anxiety, one of the themes threading her impressive new story collection.
