I dip a tiny strip of photographic paper into a vat of developer and I watch it sink. Tapping it gently with popsicle-stick prongs, I let my mind wander for two whole minutes. I’ll stop the developing process by running it into the “stop bath” for half a minute, then into the fixer solution for ...
20 years. In January, it’ll be 21. That feels like a long time, probably because I have nothing longer to compare it to. But this weekend, I came pretty close.
I try to catch myself. As the autumn leaves start to fall, sometimes it feels like I do too.
Lately, I’ve had a lot of those mornings that when I wake up, time just stretches, and I feel gelatinous. Like Jell-O. I’ve had more of them than I can count. I greet these viscous mornings with a groggy head and eyes that won’t open beyond halfway. A blindingly bright alarm clock mocks me. It’s ...
Sun streams in through the dirty windshield of my green Subaru. I prop up my knee as I drive, and if my mother saw me, she’d be upset. But you are the one in the passenger seat next to me, twiddling with my phone to pick a song on our nine-minute drive to Michael’s.
My feet swing under the chipped wooden table. I soak in the smell of sizzling tomato sauce. My grandmother’s hands—soft from Pond’s hand lotion but aged from years of hot oil splashes—are a blur. I watch her float from oven to stove, guiding raw ingredients into a meal. Unwashed vegetables, ...
In the corner of the patch of land I call home there used to sit a treehouse. The funny thing about this treehouse is that it was never in a tree at all. It was a small wooden shed, perched atop nothing but solid ground.
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 ...
Solutions by The State News
