Blog Voices from Our Community
Read stories, updates, and reflections from artists, staff, and survivors. Here, we share the heart of Awakenings — one post at a time.
The first morning after, you stripped his bed and took the sheets home. Where you had been folded in on yourself there was the shape
- Memoir
Thief of Night BCE: In Greek mythology, night is a woman. Nyx, the powerful and voluptuous goddess of the night, is also mother to Hypnos
- Memoir
My skin has traveled. I’ve walked with her under the guidance of many hands and through the meadows of many sinking, breathing bodies. I learned
- Prose
Ah, relief! Done studying for finals, I headed out to commiserate with my friend. I threw on a gauzy white shirt with blue embroidered trim,
- Memoir
The dream came again, and I knew what was happening even before I was awake. It was always the same; first the dream, and then
- Memoir
1. The face of the desk lamp shined fierce light across my fingers as I typed the finishing touches on an assignment. It was a
- Essay, Image, Other, Prose
There’s a sound that takes me back to my childhood. I’ll save you the guessing, it’s not rolling, clapping thunder or tap-tap rain. It’s snapping
- Poetry
I trembled at the altar in front of my future husband, Max, who wore a smart black tuxedo. His gentle, brown skinned, West Indian face
- Essay
When a highly respected British director tells me I am not feminine enough, I do not immediately understand. I wonder if this is an
- Poetry
Loud red, fire-engine red alarm on his arm screaming. Emergency dispatch, please send one of each: a cop, an ambulance, and a fire-truck. We might
- Poetry
One I listened to classical music from a young age. Not Bach or Debussy, but these deep, guttural religious symphonies like Joseph Haydn’s Die Schöpfung
- Short Story
once upon a time i watched and waited as mother sewed, her nimble fingers stitching the last now one, two, three stitches, and then she
- Image, Poetry
I sit cross-legged on her couch, running my hands up and down the sides of my thighs like a small child who has been asked
- Essay, Poetry
Reflecting on cupped hands and tangled limbs, the mirror will show what you missed: Wrapped under your reach, my palms remain open, legs paired sleeping
- Poetry
this one makes me think of sex and then forget again being raped in a bathroom so it’s the cigarette i might want after
- Poetry
After traumatic endings, there are no fresh starts. No fresh mornings, no fresh facing of the day. Your worldview changes, your face to the world
- Poetry
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