We would have rung in the new year in the Pennsylvania house, my third and last Christmas with Shana, the year mom and John gifted us airfare to Europe, my first time there. Like most rookie tourists we’d jam all… Read More ›
Creative Nonfiction
Coming of age, firsts and lasts
For years the days flowed from an endless tap, the morning waves at the bus stop goodbye, the evening kisses goodnight. The cycle of days spinning to weekends, holidays, to new seasons, the coming of age: a first crush, the… Read More ›
Things that I will keep
The narrative recounts a trip from Stratford to London, reflecting on themes of unemployment, nostalgia, and family experiences.
Where are we now?
I’d never flown into Germany in January and pictured it somehow colder and wetter, though resolved to make do for four weeks with just rolled-up clothes in my carryon and not check a bag. Bono had written an essay on… Read More ›
That last winter in the UK
Days of clouds and rain, low light. Light between eight and four with the rest more about the dark. Stripped of any daily responsibilities her life lost purpose and being a doer with nothing to do she went a bit… Read More ›
Through the gap in Shakespeare’s garden
It’s getting hard to make out the numbers by my bed, the clock. In the middle of the night they are a soft blue fuzz, military time, harkening back to Europe. On New Year’s we drove down from Chester to… Read More ›
On Jackson Street
I used to come down to Pioneer Square over my lunch hour to kill time. When my job didn’t matter much, no one cared if I was there, and I’d roam the side streets and street corners dreaming. Old Seattle,… Read More ›
Two sides of the same coin
It’s gotten increasingly harder to take all-cold showers as the season’s worn on. But it never disappoints, that first moment of sensory shock. Scenes of women giving birth in the Baltic from some grainy film we watched when Dawn was… Read More ›
It’s more than a feeling
Growing up in the 70s it’s hard to reconcile the kid I was then with the person I am now. A shoebox full of Polaroids and old prints, in the days before smartphones when everyone looks surprised by the camera,… Read More ›
Source code and origin stories
Maybe it’s just the light but in that first picture of me I don’t look born as much as I do unearthed, the way dad’s holding me out like some product of an archaeological dig. Dad’s so young his beard… Read More ›
Bill Pearse 