The G-Word
At every sleepover birthday party, we take turns lying on the shag rug, spread our fingers under Julie-Diana-Deanna’s head/shoulders/hips/arms/legs/feet, and recite little-girl mumbo jumbo, trying to levitate each other.
The Language of Longing
When I first learn Hebrew at Temple Beth Abraham Sunday school in Oakland, California circa ‘73, we memorize basic words, including ice cream—glida—which I mistake for God, both hard G’s and stressed D’s.
Breathing Underwater
A thick black line appears in the distance, stretching six feet across. As the shadow grows bigger, it starts to undulate. It has wings.
I Can't Sleep
I never dream and when I wake up I don’t feel like I’ve even been asleep. Sometimes I wake up thinking I’ve been awake. It’s nothing.
Composite Characters: Alice
“The first few years of my life were original, then I kept replaying the same scenes with new actors,” I said, trying to explain myself, to make some kind of amends.
Desert Hearts
I was sitting on my friend's balcony, drinking her family's homemade wine, when I realized for the hundredth time that I loved her.
1962: A Ghost Story
“Honey.” Her voice is still gentle. “A man can’t move into another man’s house.”
Dear Child of the Future
Back in these past eras, some of us talked about white supremacy like an iceberg, with the bulk of its mass below the surface, but this articulation was limited: there was nothing natural or inherent about whiteness, or capitalism and colonialism, machines finely-honed after centuries of cruel operation.
Sanctuary City
I said it was like being an altar boy all over again, only with a cheaper kind of thrill.
This Could Be Love
She drags me to each room, to each shadow: the witch, the devil, her own figure at the space where a closet meets the wall.
Papa's Tallit
It was also a good thing I had no idea what Papa was saying because every morning he thanked God he was not born a woman.
Ghost Feathers
The cold in the laundromat is specific. It is a broken-radiator cold, Buffalo, New York cold, the rotten-side-of-the-holidays cold, the cold you feel when a spirit is close.
For the Good of Those Who Love Him
Saul’s father sits down next to him, lights Saul’s candle and pats his leg. He’s always more affectionate in church, like he’s forgotten his normal behaviors. Distracted by the possibility of God, he remembers Saul.
All This Time Her Bones
Have you come to the part of your life in which you contemplate your mother’s bones?
In Ourselves, In Our Writing
When we write about people of our own creation, when we write fiction, there’s different work to do. We aren’t just noticing and deciding how to tell what we’ve noticed or experienced...We’re painting in those faint images and sensations ourselves, layering them onto more concrete descriptions of place and reality.
Spoiled
As the sun soars, heat blots out birdsong, the scratchy call of insects, and soon there’s nothing but the tramp of our boots across the parched earth.
If Party Wolf Jumps
All of which is to say when you remember Baker now it’s best to remember him with the wolf mask on, and if you remember the weeks you spent dating his older sister, remember only the good parts and the parts that make you look good.
Wait for Me
I might spend five minutes yelling into the phone, "It's me, Mamina! Your Granddaughter!" And I will hear, "Who? Who?" And I'll try and try again to no avail and think she can't hear me anymore, she can't see me anymore.
And From His Grave a Rose
We drank hot black Turkish coffee, quashing our grimaces, pretending our tastes had changed.
for the love of lowly things (for Mary)
In December, it is the season of Advent in the church calendar, and in the sanctuary, large-scale artwork of a pregnant belly adorns the stage. I wonder at the quiet fury and joy of Mary, her declaration in the Magnificat that God has “filled the hungry and sent the rich away empty.”
Origin Story
I understand the urge to do it up, up up and away, until you get so far gone and high the only place to come back down is on some open stretch of highway.
My Condolences
The girl, whose name I never learned, didn’t die before the song was over, and we never saw her again.
The Ducks in Winter
I even envy my old life now, my own youth, so I start rearranging the furniture to make the past come back, or some of it.
Not Always the Hero
It is difficult to realize that someone you respect and care for understands you and people that look like you as self-centered and reactionary because you demand inalienable rights.
Beneath a Vacant Sky
Marla is convinced that if the moon hadn’t exploded, Austin would’ve kissed her.
Dream Journal
I’m a little girl with short hair again, but I can no longer slip back into the silent games she used to play.
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The Waking is an online literary magazine and a part of the Ruminate creative community that houses high-quality literary writing about what it’s like to be human. We are interested in short-form prose and image-text hybrid work. This art can be beautiful, it can be strange, we just ask that it feels true.