The Great Gatsby entered the public domain in 2021. The air tasted the same. The clocks chimed no differently. The eyes of T.J. Eckleburg remained unblinking. But the world as we—those of us exposed to The Great Gatsby in a high school English class—knew it was forever changed.
a promise unkept
Long ago, a girl with golden locks and cowboy boots beneath her princess dress declared: “there’s more to life / than dating the boy on the football team.” And so there was. The little girl went on to grant the gifts of a fairy godmother ($55 million in bonuses to her Eras Tour crew), make the ...
Sometimes I feel like I’m running out of time with the people who love me. I watch the date change on my phone as 11:59 turns to midnight, wondering which day they’ll decide that I’m not their type of person anymore. I think I’ve found my people: they know me, they love me, and they make this ...
Serendipity is not a feeling I’d expect to experience often, but somehow, I do. Songs, words, and people seemingly come into my life right when I need them most.
For anyone with access to the internet, especially any woman-identifying person in her teens, twenties, or thirties, 2023 will go down as an unforgettable amalgamation of transient “girl” TikTok trends: girl dinner, girl's girls, for the girls, the girls who get it, girl math, even Gwen Stefani’s ...
“Abroad planning,” “Barcelona bucket list,” “Travel to book,” “Running to-do list”: the top four lists I see when I open my Notes app, and those are just ones I have pinned. I have 1830 notes (and counting) on my phone. I used to consider this addiction a great accomplishment, but recently ...
The trumpeter swan pokes his nose through the water’s surface. Staring back at him, a wavering mirror radiates from his small, pointed beak. As he takes one step in, ripples ricochet from his thin legs to the tip of the shore. He delicately situates himself on top of the surface, admiring the dancing ...
Every year, the tulips on my front lawn grow. Even after we cut down the small, short tree with the hanging arms of leaves you could climb underneath, and even after we covered the dirt where Grandma used to sit with us on Sundays to plant flowers (small pink and orange garden-ready ones and tulips, ...
The year was 2008. I still remember the golden glow of Taylor Swift’s Fearless gleaming on the rack like a homing beacon for little girls across the country as I strolled through the Target CD aisle with my mom. “Love Story” was a smash hit on the radio, a song we both already knew and loved. ...
Little girls' brains are sticky as flytraps. When you're young, every facial expression you see, every word you read, and the smallest fragments of information all collect in the back of your brain. These details combine to form a kaleidoscope of beliefs that color everything around you, distorting ...
Pieces of praise. Type of poem. Flattering lines. Homage in verse. Ode!
I fumble with my keys as I try to juggle my umbrella, lanyard, and packages without dropping everything. I finally get a grasp on my green-nail-polish-spattered key, and sigh with relief as I slide it into the keyhole. I turn it to the right. The door doesn’t budge. I try again; the door remains shut. ...
In August, it rained for two weeks straight. I had only packed one sweater for a two-month internship, and the threads were thinning out at the cuffs. It was 1:30 a.m.—the latest I had stayed up all summer—and I sat in the corner of my host family’s guest bedroom. I held the fading knit fabric ...
Ask anyone about the summer of 2023 and they will tell you it was the summer of Barbenheimer. What they won’t tell you, however, is that it was just as much the summer of country music.
Five days after I drove off the Universal Studios lot in 100-degree heat for the last time this summer, I flew to Europe for my semester abroad. My internship at Amblin Entertainment felt like a distant memory by the time my Spanish immersion program began two weeks later in Barcelona. After my first ...
In the months before I first left for college, I started recording my friends. Not video, just their voices: the stories we exchanged in the car on the way to the movie theater, the way we said goodbye to each other after a day at the beach, the jokes we told at sleepovers—which we only found funny ...
Solutions by The State News
