These days, we keep having conversations just to say we can’t keep having conversations. I spend an hour on the phone with the last man I dated, listing all the reasons we aren’t right for each other. There is all of the logic — all the distance and the differences…

If Ariana Grande says I’m supposed to be as powerful as God because of my sexuality, what does it mean when I’m not? — Flash back to last summer, when I still felt full: I am sleeping on an air mattress in my friends’ apartment to buy me a few extra weeks in New York after the end of my lease in June. I am living out of a suitcase or two, which I’m…

Growing up, I was taught that I had to be both the smartest girl in class and the prettiest girl in class. I was never explicitly taught that girls should be valued for their appearance over their intellect. …

European paintings are on the second floor of the Met, but I don’t care much if I get there. I’m sitting on a bench beneath a glass ceiling, wiping the January sweat and snot from beneath my mask after walking toward Central Park in a harsh wind. …

This essay is published in the fifth issue of Witches Mag: Time. Time suspends around us in the spring, but I can still hear the clock ticking. Over FaceTime, I cannot stop crying. Bernie Sanders is dropping out of the 2020 presidential race, and my boyfriend is moving to Michigan…

This piece was originally published in Siblíní Journal: The Distance Diaries in June 2020, under the title, “List of Reasons.” The gravity of coronavirus became clear to me in early March, during my spring break, when I spent 10-hour days writing my master’s thesis in the eerily quiet lobby of…

This essay was originally published in the fourth issue of Witches Mag under the title, “Purgatory.” The morning after we break things off, I hear my alarm blare and immediately walk to my bathroom, sit down on the toilet, and begin to cry for the first time in four months…

In April, I defended my master’s thesis to a committee of four professors via Zoom. The main character in my paper was Taylor Swift, as I was writing down everything I knew about how pop stars incorporate political messages into their music. I spent most of my defense arguing that…

Trying so hard not to be single made me feel like a terrible feminist. — On the eve of my 24th birthday, I sit in a restaurant in Little Italy drinking red wine from a carafe, sharing ravioli and tagliatelle with my college friends. I am not my usual self tonight. …