goodbye for now, Providence [narrative]
By Ana Vissicchio | February 11I have always lived in the same place—the same suburban town, the same quiet house, the same small bedroom.
I have always lived in the same place—the same suburban town, the same quiet house, the same small bedroom.
As my feet, clad in an obnoxious blue and orange sneaker combo, hit the pavement again and again and again, I can’t help but feel guilty.
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, ...