Author name: Jenny Ng

My husband stood in our kitchen, gripping his coffee mug so hard his knuckles turned white. He didn’t look at me; he looked through me. “Sarah, look. I value my mental health too much for this,” he said, his voice cold and flat. “You have until Sunday. Either you find a facility for the old […]

I let my father die with his suitcase packed under his bed, waiting for a ride home I knew was never coming. My name is David, and I am 56 years old. Two months ago, we buried my father. At the service, people kept coming up to me, patting my shoulder, offering the usual comforts.

My name is Sarah, I am 66 years old, and I am currently hiding in the back row of a dim movie theater on a Tuesday afternoon. I’m watching a superhero movie I don’t understand, eating a small bag of popcorn that I shouldn’t be eating because of my cholesterol. My phone is buzzing in

I watched my sister’s perfect life burn to the ground last Tuesday at 3:00 AM, and here is the ugly truth I can barely admit to myself: It felt like a victory. My name is Sarah. I’m 36 years old. And for three decades, I have been known simply as “Jessica’s sister.” You probably know

I am a criminal. I haven’t broken any laws, I haven’t held up a bank, and I certainly don’t have a record. But make no mistake: I am a thief. I have robbed the only two people in this world who would gladly lay down their lives for mine. My father is a man who

I lay on my frozen driveway for forty-two minutes before I realized the truth: I could die here, and the only thing that would notice would be the automatic porch light flicking off. At 78, you don’t just “fall.” You shatter. One minute I was reaching for the mail—hoping for a real letter, not just

I thought I was walking into a drug deal. I ended up looking into the eyes of a 6-year-old boy who was slowly turning into an ice sculpture. It was 3:00 AM in the dead of January, somewhere along the edge of the Ohio border where the wind screams across the flatlands like a freight

I didn’t leave him because he hit me. I left him because my twenty-pound Maine Coon decided to kill him before he could turn my home into a prison. They say animals see the things we choose to ignore. They smell the rot under the expensive cologne and see the shadow behind the charming smile.

The blood on the $12,000 designer rug was still warm when my son-in-law asked if our insurance would cover a professional cleaning crew. I didn’t pack my bags because a man with a knife had broken into our home. I packed them because while my dog lay dying to protect a family that didn’t want

The scariest sound in my house isn’t a bump in the night. It’s the sound of the garage door opening at 5:45 PM, announcing that my “perfect life” is back for the evening. My name is Sarah. I’m 45 years old, living in a nice suburb that everyone wants to move into. My husband, Mark,