Think About This
Art by Kirsten Hemrich
February 12, 2019
Her veil: blush, pearl-spotted.
Lashes: heavy (fake), coming undone.
The pale gap above her eye. Rani, half-past-nineteen.
It is a Tuesday, raining. I wait with her in a much-loved family minivan.
The heat slips down my neck
Art by Kirsten Hemrich
February 11, 2019
I completely suck at self-care. And not in a cutesy, humblebrag way or in a self-deprecating way. We just do not get along. It’s to the point where I hear someone exhort the importance of self-care along with suggestions of meditations or face masks, and I roll my eyes to the back of my skull so hard they may pop out from their sockets. My mom is probably forwarding a Tiny Buddha email to me right now, and I’m already moving it to my trash folder without reading
Art by Kirsten Hemrich
January 28, 2019
“Arab women are a lot like coffee. strong. refreshing. Roasted until nearly burnt and then marketed as bitter. Expected to keep you going when you can’t do it yourself. Mis-used. Under appreciated.” (Yasmeen AlFaraj, University of California, Berkeley @_alfa_ya)
My grandmother wakes up before the sun. A full night of sleep does not diminish, nor does it puncture, perfectly
Art by Kirsten Hemrich
January 27, 2019
A (brief) introduction to the daily microaggressions faced by black people on campus
Earlier this semester, I was walking home from a dining hall. The light of the sun was still dancing on the sidewalk, in a tango with the darkness of emerging shadows. The bodies of students were distorted into inhuman shapes. I was with my roommate. Topic up for debate: racism and its subtle presence in
Art by Kirsten Hemrich
January 25, 2019
I was in the middle of teaching one afternoon when a man died right outside my classroom door.
A scream cut through the air. And then another. And another. I froze. I had just launched into the class’s next composition prompt, when one of my students, Adam, came in the door. He wasn’t usually late to class. His freckles contrasted on his face more than usual
Art by Kirsten Hemrich
January 24, 2019
Art by Kirsten Hemrich
January 23, 2019
Art by Kirsten Hemrich
November 14, 2018
an apology to my body
*Trigger Warning: content contains themes concerning disordered eating
i stare at you in the mirror and
my fingers creep down your edges
what once were curved like
rolling hills on the skyline are now
flat like razed earth and hard in places
i hadn’t felt before
i don’t know when you started shrinking
it happened so rapidly last year but
somehow i didn’t see it til
i came across a picture taken 5
Art by Kirsten Hemrich
November 13, 2018
My great-grandmother was a lifelong smoker.
Even in retrospect, the image of her mystifies me. There she is: ninety-something, her body soft and small and folded, a silver braid peeking out from beneath the lace cap she always wore. And there, in an innocent corner of her Karachi home, is her favorite hookah pipe, with its green base and its strange, saccharine scent of burnt tobacco. Every day, after saying
Art by Kirsten Hemrich
November 13, 2018
Sometimes I take pictures of my books. I pull my favorites from their carefully selected spots on my shelf, and put them on top of my blanket, where the sunlight is shining. Sometimes I put them next to a cup of tea, or a small bundle of fake flowers. After I take my pictures, I edit and post them on my Instagram account dedicated to books, aka bookstagram