As the narrator encounters winter-stranded birds desperate for whatever food they can find, she considers a night in which she witnessed a girl desperate to reunite with her abusive boyfriend, as well as the narrator’s own desperate attachments to an abusive lover. […]
“The World Behind the World” grapples with the restaurant industry’s insularity and examines how that exclusivity embodies wider dynamics of power, race, and class. […]
Sometimes shyness and loneliness go hand in hand. And sometimes loneliness is not so much about being alone, or isolated, but an inability to connect with others on a meaningful level. A feeling too raw and too embarrassing to be expressed except within the protective shell of a hermit crab essay. With thanks to Sara Ryan for her piece, “Body Puzzle,” which offered the perfect shell.level. A feeling too raw and too embarrassing to be expressed except within the protective shell of a hermit crab essay. With thanks to Sara Ryan for her piece, “Body Puzzle,” which offered the perfect shell. […]
The short essay Encounters with Māya (Illusion) takes us on a journey through dreams, poems, and sacred texts to reflect on living as a human, awakening to ‘reality’, and staying connected to one another through hardship. […]
This essay explores a few assumptions and real-world events about what we as children are taught to believe regarding the social concepts of family, fraternity, and fidelity. Formative experiences from the author’s childhood turn the home-spun concepts of familial love, brotherhood, and justice on their heads. After all is said and done however, there is love in the world—genuine love. None of us is perfect, but perhaps the critical period for human decency spans not weeks or months, but a lifetime. […]
A meditative piece on a brief encounter witnessed a few years ago on Albuquerque’s Jefferson Street on a winter afternoon: in the daily grind of just trying to get where we need to go – physically, figuratively, spiritually – we are faced with the realities of our circumstances. And when we connect as humans, it is oftentimes done so when we stop to really see each other, to pay witness to the brief, fleeting, often ignored struggles that become our everyday life. […]
This essay is an attempt to explore the author’s relationship with the Arabic language and love. Although his relationship with his father is the centre of this exploration, this essay remains a love-letter to all of Nofel’s friends and former lovers and an invitation to a different linguistic experience of love. […]
In Backstrokes the author describes a reconnection with a cherished friend and kindred spirit from four decades ago. Their meet-up sparks a series of reflections in which she reassesses the value of usefulness as a lifelong priority. […]
This essay recounts a story of mutual discomfort between two teenagers. The speaker considers the events in retrospect in which he realizes the degree to which he made a person, to whom he was romantically interested, uncomfortable. The piece centers on communication breakdown, the failure of a friendship, misapprehension of others, the speaker’s journey to self awareness, and a healthier, yet still evolving, approach to intimacy and rejection. […]
During a solitary evening in New York City, the author contemplates the chasm between glamor and brutality, between transitory human connection, and disaffected loneliness. […]
Copyright © 2021 The Nasiona. All Rights Reserved.
