Creative Non-Fiction Essays
Cityscapes and Insect Traits
Time doesn’t fly on the Metra. It dies. As soon as the muffled chime rings and a garbled, automated robotic voice sputters over the speakers, “Caution! The doors are about to close,” it’s as if I’ve sealed myself into tube, I’ve lost my chance for escape. I’m trapped in the belly of the whale, or in this case, the capsule of the ghastly Commuting Caterpillar. Sitting inside on the fatigued vinyl seats, time whittles away with every mile, every rattle, every ticket punch. The caterpillar will never evolve into a butterfly. The cocoon stays . . .
Unfinished Lines
It was the last Tuesday of a Midwestern August, at the sun’s afternoon peak, its rays blazing with heat. Hot enough that it felt like someone cranked my body temperature to boiling, then sealed my skin with Saran Wrap. Humid enough to believe I was trapped inside of a sauna for too long, as if I was breathing in only twenty seven percent of the amount of oxygen I was intending to with each labored breath. Yet the ninety-degree temperatures was not enough to call off the McHenry County Cross-Country . . .
Unexpected Roots
It’s 10:47 am on a seriously suburban, sunny, spring Saturday. I have roughly two and a half hours before I need to be at work. Sixty-five degrees out and my car is just sitting in the driveway, begging to be driven. I grab my camera and a sketchbook (how artsy of me) and practically bound out the door.
About two minutes before I left the house (10:55), I decided I’d go for a drive, something too many of us young suburbanites do for fun . . .
Underfoot
Carpet accumulates many things. Dust, hair, dirt, pieces of intangible matter. My carpet in particular accumulates these things, except for the dirt. I don’t wear shoes in the house because of the filth I imagine they come in contact with the second they hit the pavement outside. Theoretically, I could have stepped in vomit or urine or who knows what else in a single pair of shoes. My carpet doesn’t need to accumulate . . .