I write creative nonfiction, memoir-style essays.
“Manicured Permanence”
Published via You Might Need To Hear this on Oct. 10, 2022.
For her funeral a year ago, I got a manicure. It was important that I show up to that drab funeral home where the coffee is always lukewarm and the orchids in the windowsills are fake with ten fingernails polished to perfection. I could never promise my grandmother that I would always be able to take care of my head or my heart, but I promise I’ll take care of my nails.
“My Friend Sonny”
Published via Hillsdale’s Towerlight this in Dec 2022.
"I think of Sonny every time Mick winds his way through my legs, staring up at me with his lunar yellow eyes. Instead of pulsing slivered pupils, he has wide-open irises. He looks at me the way my friend Sonny always did: unexpecting, adoring, in need of a break from lighting up the sky every night for everyone else. If I could tuck Mick away in an envelope, I’d send him to Montana."
“Snake Oil on the Indiana Turnpike”
Published via Streetlit this on April 20, 2023.
The off-ramps on the Indiana Turnpike look nothing like home, a word whose meaning became lost to me after my injury. I still feel the urge to close my eyes when my car begins to tilt, even though there are no specific reminders of what happened to me on the road other than the blueprint of my body. Foundationally, I am askew. And I’m the only one who feels it.