To my friends, I tell the story as a joke. If Sarafina comes up in conversation, she — who bought me a beautiful pink tutu when I was nine and gave me beads and clasps to make my own jewelry when I was 14 and took me to Birdland to hear jazz when I was 19 —  is now cast as an eccentric. She is my crazy aunt, the one who changed her name. # Peggy’s new name and lifestyle elicit revelations within the family. We used to find her lying on the ground, staring, my mother says. She’d bless herself over and over. She was sent to a psychiatric hospital when she was 14 years old, Philomena says ..read more

I lived with my mom and grandma. Just the three of us. No siblings, no cousins, no aunts or uncles. Everyone I knew was one of our ages: adolescent, middle-aged, or elderly. No in-between. Thus, at thirteen, I was certain I’d soon be in midlife. From there, it’d be a quick bounce to old age, like a skipping stone toward death. Every day I stared in the mirror, checking the profile of my chin, horrified by the lines on my neck. The full The Day My Mother Lost Her Looks by Jenelle Boucher can be found at Memoir Magazine ..read more

When Amy’s mother dies, there will be an autopsy. The report’s first paragraph will detail long black hairs protruding from her chin. It will be a commentary, a character judgement, a classification by statement of unnecessary fact. Amy will thumb her own stubbly chin and stop reading. It will all feel wrong. The full Hypostasis by Amy Bailey can be found at Memoir Magazine ..read more

 *Featured Art: A TEAR by Carolyn Schlam, Ink and Watercolor, 14″ x 11″, 2020 I am lying on the Murphy bed in Herb’s dark living room, having finally acquiesced to his reasoning, pleading, and emphatic swearing that he would not ejaculate in me. Because I would kill him. “Are you positive you can do this?”... The full Hon by Laurie Harriton can be found at Memoir Magazine ..read more

And then there were days when the ditch was full but no one to play with. My cousins weren’t around, and my brother didn’t want anything to do with me, so I put on my swim trunks or cut-offs or whatever lingered clean in my dresser drawer and what I had deemed worthy of ditch... The full Ditch Days by Kase Johnstun can be found at Memoir Magazine ..read more

with Featured artwork “Summer Shapes” by Norton Pease This, this is the memory that awoke in me one night while showering before bed. And let’s just get one thing straight before I go any further—this isn’t some story about a kid that got molested. Because it’s not. He’d peered down at my little boy body,... The full This Is Not Some Story About a Kid That Got Molested — Gary Smothers can be found at Memoir Magazine ..read more

First Easter It was our first Easter together.  I was in a good mood, springtime in Chicago can do that to a person. The Easter displays were up and I decided to do the Easter shopping. I had all the essentials: fake grass, an assortment of candy, an Easter basket, and of course eggs and... The full First and Last Easter by S. Severin can be found at Memoir Magazine ..read more

In the beginning.             My father married my mother and they begat six children, loving each of us unconditionally. Dad played the organ at church, Mom sang in the choir, and they raised me to be a good Catholic girl. And God saw that it was good. Whatsoever you do to the least of my... The full Misconstrued by Karen DeBonis can be found at Memoir Magazine ..read more

I do remember going to visit shortly after the stroke. As a preschooler, and through no great accomplishment of my own, I was suddenly more articulate than the patriarch of my family; even at that age, the unfairness of this role reversal was not lost on me. The full You Can Call Me Betty by Allison Wehrle can be found at Memoir Magazine ..read more

...at least when you are not lying awake at night in your bed in the living room, feeling the enormity of the world’s violence and wondering how your family might somehow make it through unscathed. There is much you do not know about your parents, but you sense, from the well of silence about their past, that have already experienced the world’s awfulness in the life they fled. And they are experiencing it again now, their own son’s presence in Europe forcing them to remember the places they left behind and the Polish villagers and the police and the priests and the dirt floors and whatever i ..read more