Before I learned about war, loss, or cruelty, I learned about joy from a boy named Ahmed. My great aunt’s neighbor couldn’t speak yet, but I enjoyed spending time with him. He was quiet, and I …

I converted to Catholicism earlier this year, though I dislike calling myself a Catholic convert. The phrase suggests conservative politicians like J.D. Vance, who wield Catholicism to achieve harsh …

At the movie theater that had become a college for kids said to be special they took a math class with a man who was frustrated with the amount of paper being balled up and tossed in the air around …

Her goal in life was to write a short story in the fourth person. This was something she had to do without me. I was told to leave our two-bedroom apartment. The day I moved out it was raining. I …

Schefflera photos and collages are by author unless otherwise noted. Plant photos on 11-13 are by photographer friend Uli Schackmann with digital manipulation by the author.

Being queer comes with responsibilities: the pressure to be more steadfast in my convictions than my straight friends, to reinvent relationship models, family structures, kinship networks even if it …

I have been wanting to write an essay about the Chinese woman writer Ding Ling, but for the longest time I could not muster the energy amid the pandemic and the continuing onslaught of anti-Asian …

Time can mean grace for survivors of sharp ends. Like, how one afternoon, god meant finding your eyes. I’m trying to say thank you for teaching me how to quit arching away from the glass, …

"Do you ever feel like/ you're just living/ the same day / over/ and over / and over again."

As long as I have been old enough to understand what the middle class is, it has been described as “shrinking.”

Online Exclusives non-fiction from Darcy Jay Gagnon.

In early May we are driving south from Phoenix on Interstate 10. The land in every direction is sparsely vegetated—saguaro cactus, organ pipe cholla, barrel cactus, and mesquite. Dust blows across …

I had not yet labeled myself but felt the pull of men irresistible. I was drawn to a boy and examined every tether but the core one, that I wanted him to feel the same for me and I knew he didn’t. …

In January of 2020, two months before a gathering of this kind would become unthinkable, I treated myself to a $30 cardio dance class at Banana Skirt Productions in midtown Manhattan. We’d been …

You once said to me—as a joke, I suppose—that all your books are “brief, collaborative, and plagiarized,” but really what is the secret to your somewhat monomaniacal rate of production, …

On 9/11, with the radio transcribing the ongoing events and his white coworkers in the plant nursery going mad as though the place was burning down, all my dad could do was laugh. As far as he knew, …

When someone at school asks, “Where are you from?” what they mean is, “Are you from the wet side or the dry side?” You are from the wet side, the side more prone to damage.

It turns out some people will risk anything for a haircut. They will meet under a bridge, they will text unknown numbers, they will venture out into a pandemic. It turns out that I may have a strange …