Non-Fiction

In our living room, a box sits atop a record player, with a black and white photo placed upon the box. All three items act as a tabletop for collected dust…

I was there to induce labor at 22 weeks’ gestation. I was there to end my pregnancy. To have a late-term abortion. Abortion. Jesus, the word stings, doesn’t it?

Some days are yellow, some are blue. I know by heart my two-year-old’s favorite Dr. Seuss book and the rhymes repeat in my mind…

You loved the rose-scented soap in my bathroom. You would rub it all over your body in the shower, and I would flinch, and think ‘is that even hygienic’?

I never knew how my mom would answer the question that I’d pose to her each morning when I’d call at 6:45. It was the same question every day…

When my grandmother died, my mother reported that her last words were: “Is that all?” Although I was not present at her death, I doubted this.

My daughter, now eighteen, is vibrant and healthy. Julia Rose has wild curly blonde hair that frames her face like a lion’s mane.

I walk into my parents’ home to pick my mom up for a family gathering, and like most days over the past few weeks, palpable sorrow greets me at the door.

While growing up in Spanish Harlem – El Barrio as we knew it during the exhilarating years of the 1970s and 80s – diversity was my monarch, acceptance my culture, and faith my freedom.