Author name: Jenny Ng

The kid standing on my porch had hair the color of cotton candy and fingernails painted black. I thought he was everything wrong with this country. I was the one who was broken. I didn’t want to order the food. My daughter installed the delivery app on my phone, saying I was getting too thin […]

I almost called the police on my own father. I wish I was joking. I was sitting at his kitchen table, staring at a bank statement I wasn’t supposed to see. It was buried under a stack of coupons and overdue medical bills. My dad, Frank, is 72. He worked at the steel mill for

I walked out of my son’s house tonight, leaving a steaming pot roast on the table and my apron on the floor. I didn’t quit being a grandmother; I quit being a ghost in my own family. My name is Martha. I am sixty-eight years old, and for the last three years, I have been

I didn’t cancel my $50,000 wedding because of a lipstick stain on a collar or a secret credit card statement. I canceled it seventy-two hours before walking down the aisle because of a single push notification and a silence that was louder than any scream. We were the envy of our social circle. I was

I didn’t leave my son’s house because of the argument. I left because my ten-year-old grandson looked at a single drop of his own blood and asked if he was going to die. My name is Frank. For forty years, I was a union carpenter. My hands are essentially leather, scarred by chisels, table saws,

My father has had one sacred rule for fifty years: “Never interrupt a man while he’s earning his living.” Never. Not for a birthday, not for a bad cold, not for a flat tire. You handle your business, and you let others handle theirs. Until two Saturdays ago. My name is Mike. I’m 46, a

The neighbors swore Silas was running a meth lab or a chop shop. When I finally kicked down his barn door, gun drawn, I didn’t find criminals. I found a miracle. In Blackwood County, rumors grow faster than the kudzu vines eating our telephone poles. As the Sheriff, I hear them all. But the whispers

At 6:45 PM last Tuesday, I placed a sealed envelope on my kitchen counter. Inside were the passwords to my bank accounts, a cancellation letter for my lease, and a note for my sister. My apartment was clean. My debts were tallied. I was twenty-six years old, and I was done. If you looked at

The motion sensor notification buzzed on my phone at 4:17 PM. I tapped the screen, and the camera feed from the farm stand loaded in clear 4K resolution. I watched a young woman commit a crime. My grandfather’s 12-gauge shotgun was sitting in the corner of the living room, clean and loaded. But I didn’t