Nugget King
“Shut up, Allen,” I say, but Allen’s already standing and holding the black trash bag like a prize. I can smell the garlicky pink sludge starting to thaw inside it.
The Animals They Used to Be
The bones, he knew from a childhood obsession with dinosaurs... would be there forever; or, almost forever—as forever as it mattered.
Mamá Makes a Call to México
Again, mamá will parse what she can and pretend the voice soun ds the same as the voice in her memories across the border
Fake Teeth
We didn’t play Shark Attack anymore after I face-planted on a marble slide and banged my two front teeth.
Pork Fluff
He never did like her cooking and his wife berated him every time he asked for pork fluff to go with his rice.
Infinite Wrecking Ball
"Besides, seventy years seems a sensible lifespan for a wrecking ball," I told the salesman, my face as honest as a dinner plate.
Anatomy of Worry: As Narrative, As Magic
I transform any unexpected tragedy, with worry, into the expected. I sap its narrative potential.
Love
The problem with Love, Carla likes to pronounce at random intervals, slicing the otherwise long silence of the sessions, is that it is the domain of science, of We can build you into Love.
Upon Learning My Uncle Doug Had Been Married and Divorced Before He Died: A Dialectic
They'll tell you, go to college, but mostly, they don't mean to study; they mean for the M.R.S. degree. They'll tell you, what—you thought it was free?
Fatal Gaze
I have learned that in order to “fall” in love, I must be ready to no longer live in the perfect balance of self-absorption in which falling does not include the outcomes of actual failing.
The Hill Was Flat
I have never said to my own mother, I wish you lost me in a wild place, but it is true.
Hagar's Tears
This is my morning task now, to sweep the stars out of my tent before the others awake. I must be careful, or the stars might cut my feet, too.
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.
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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.