I think I first met her in a dream-she, a teenager and I, a child. We must have sat in the park, among the narcissi and azaleas, or on a beach, soaking up the sun, with a picnic basket filled with half-eaten sandwiches between us. Both of us must have been wearing black—she, a flimsy…
Category: Personal Essay
Pretending it’s the Perfect Christmas: Personal Essay
If I had to pinpoint the exact time when it all fell apart, it would probably be the day I turned thirteen. I was a full self-proclaimed non-believer by then, and my Christmas presents included an enviable assortment of punk-rock music, from classics like the Sex Pistols to Green Day’s latest rock opera. I knew…
The Secret Life of Diaries: Creative Non Fiction
i. Wonderland of Deep Space and Beyond At the age of nine, I was a swashbuckling space pirate. My imaginary friend and I would embark on intergalactic, death-defying adventures, uncover plots of world domination, battle courageously with aliens and save Planet Earth from extra-terrestrial invasion and be back home just in time for supper. My…
What’s Your Sign? Archer Afire
Series: Sagittarius I spent the best part of my childhood falling down rabbit holes and uncovering fantastical alternate realities to escape into. Perhaps the Sagittarian streak in my birth charts was to blame for this, and much more. The world of myths and folklore had always fascinated me, and next to phoenixes and unicorns, centaurs…
What Sylvia Plath Taught Me: Life Lessons
(That Has Nothing To Do With The Art Of Suicide) For a lot of English majors, Sylvia Plath is the ultimate rockstar. With her poetic genius, glamorous looks, celebrated marriage to Ted Hughes and her tragic death of carbon monoxide poisoning, she can make Kurt Cobain seem a bit too passé. If Holden Caulfield is…
How Essay Writing Changed My Life: Personal Essay
I saw my first horror movie when I was nine. In it, I witnessed a scene of domestic violence I shall not narrate here for the sake of privacy. But yes, expletives were exchanged, blood spilled and glass shattered. But the next morning the only evidence was a broken window. In the middle of that…
The Skin Deep Myth Of Black Beauty: Perspective
My skin’s brown as a walnut except when I bleach, wax or apply an overdose of face powder to look white. As children, my school friends and I would play a seemingly harmless game- we’d press our arms against each other, trying to compare which of us had the fairest skin tone. Needless to say…
David Bowie in His Labyrinth: Personal Essay
For me, David Bowie wasn’t an ageless celebrity to rival the likes of Madonna or Bob Dylan, but a strange, god-like figure. The type of celestial being whose career spans generations of eccentricity and experimentation, existing on the fringes of mythology, never quite a part of the mainstream pantheon, but always there, nevertheless, as an…
The Sepia-Tinted, Childhood-Shaped Room : Personal Essay
I was never a magician’s assistant, but sometimes in my fantasies I like to pretend I’m one. We did not have a stage or fancy spotlights but we did have a dusty attic and the sunlight streaming through the mullioned windows and causing the dust motes to shimmer goldenly like pixies was magical enough. And…
A Walk in the Woods: Creative Non Fiction
A montage of images and musings on the agony of growing up and apart “Ring-a-ring-a-roses, A pocket full of posies; Ashes! Ashes! We all fall down” The leaves weren’t emerald and the sun wasn’t gold but when I remember them, I think of jewels. The forest was dark and misty, a ghostly breeze trailing through the…
Flying Kites From Afar: Personal Essay
I can’t fly a kite. It was simply one of those things I just couldn’t master-my brain would get confused with all the intricacies of thread tugging-or simply, I wasn’t taught well. Which was how when all my countless cousins (and cousins of cousins perhaps) and the neighbourhood gang of boys accosted my terrace, the…
The Snow Of Europe and a Love For Pretence: Personal Essay
There is a cotton tree near my house, that in winter, flowers the most exquisite orange-red blossoms, so exquisite in fact, that I’ve nicknamed them “my cherry blossoms” although I am aware that they do not resemble the Japanese cherry blossoms from even the remotest perspective. And although I’ve never been to Japan in person,…
