Lately, I’ve been watching myself disappear again. I remember the feeling, achingly familiar, like the warm hug of your covers when you know you’ve slept too long past your alarm. It used to cling to me constantly. My freshman year of college, at any given point, I wasn’t sure whether I existed. ...
My mother’s childhood was full of plants made into toys. The last time I was in Moscow—11 years ago now, the memories are growing rusty—she shared them with me, introducing me to the many plants that could become playthings, even in a big city. There were the “touch-me-not” plants, “nedotroga,” ...
I found out recently that my favorite coffee shop in Providence will be closing in less than two weeks. This is both heartbreaking and, in some ways, strangely fitting.
Trees in Rhode Island stand tall and thin, reaching toward the deep-blue sky with their spindly branches. From the window of a train speeding from Providence to Boston, I watch them stretch, toward the clouds, toward each other, standing proud and bare in the icy earth. On the CalTrain from my hometown ...
There are the ones I left in a drafty room over a frigid New England December, only to come back from sun-baked California to their slouching, frozen corpses. The countless overwatered succulents, the root-bound vines, the pothos I just couldn’t make happy. The ones left forgotten, unwatered on my ...
A friend once told me that he thinks Californians grow up thinking life is easy because they don’t have to deal with bad weather. He’s not entirely wrong: At home, the seasons melt into each other almost unnoticed—the sun shifts its shade, the wind picks up a chill, suddenly it’s dark at 4 p.m. ...
When I was in the fifth grade, I was given an assignment to write a poem about “who I am.” A big task, really, for a fifth grader with naive brown eyes and puffy cheeks and very little concept of what it meant to be something or someone. In a font meant to imitate handwriting, centered on a page, ...
A tea bag in black ink winds its way up my upper arm, lavender and carnations blooming inside of it. The winter chill means it’s mostly hidden from the world. Sometimes I forget it exists. But in the back of my mind, I know it’s there: an amulet I carry with me, a reminder that I exist in the world ...
A few weeks ago, on a grocery run, I came across bunches of daffodils—the first sign of spring. I bought a bunch and brought them home, cradling them gently; I put them in an empty pasta jar and propped them up against the windowsill. Daffodils always remind me of home—my mother loves them and buys ...
(1) the act of blurring what is not yours and what is (ex. black sesame milk tea; tonkotsu ramen; cafeteria chicken noodle soup)
Solutions by The State News
