In Four, Hold Seven, Out Eight
As I stood in front of my 9th grade math classmates, I wished to be anywhere else. My teacher had cold-called on me to answer the question on the board. As I stood there my heart pounded, and it was so hard to breathe that it felt like a mountain had fallen on top of […]
Read MoreMore Than Shyness
“Uno out! See? I am better than you!” I laughed as I slapped down my last “plus 4 wild” card, beating my twin sister in yet another round of Uno. We would play for hours, our conversation swirling from the game to everything else. She and I often talked way past our bedtimes, and my […]
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Housing Stability Changed My Life
My mom, my six siblings, and I moved into a homeless shelter in Brooklyn in February 2021. It was a shelter for families with children, and the apartment they put us in was horrible. The walls had graffiti and mold on them, the floors looked like they’d never been cleaned, and you could hear rats […]
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Moving Forward On My Own
When I was 6, my father took my two brothers and me to New York’s famous Far Rockaway beach. Humongous waves slammed on us, and we were fascinated by our first experience on American sand. I didn’t know how to swim, so I clung to the safety that the shallow water provided. Apparently not safe […]
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