The Mailbox

I sat quietly and patiently as several family members got up enough nerve to speak directly to me at our end of the month brunch my parents hold on the estate. Unlike many of the previous brunches, this one was held out of doors to accommodate all the relatives who made a special trip into town in order to hear firsthand the big surprise that everyone was expecting to hear. It was more like they wanted to put their best foot forward knowing my pending elevation to heights that their imaginations…

“why’d you do that?” I turned around and saw my little sister, rubbing crusties out of the corners of her tired eyes. Like always she was holding her midnight blue tattered auto sales t-shirt that had once belonged to our father. I walked over and scooped her up into my arms. “why’d you do that?” she asked again, pointing at the bouquet of crisp dead roses sitting in the top of the overflowing garbage bin. “They’re no good anymore peach, all shriveled up and falling apart. I’ll pick some up…

On the day September 18,2001 the first anthrax attack happened only one week after the attack on the twin towers. “The Anthrax attacks started on the east coast around Boston then traveled throughout the country.”(Alex Collins 1)The first guy died a couple days after and the world realized that anthrax was deadly and was coming for the country.”A terrorist attack in the United States on our home territory”(Alex Collins 2). A panic went off in every nook and cranny in the country. Most biomedical…

her yearning to find her sense of self is an excuse Holly often uses whenever she abandons someone or something. Her instability is first recognized when the narrator, who recently moved into the apartment building, notices Holly’s name slot on her mailbox. Instead of it just saying her name,…

I remember sitting on the edge of a wooden brown chair facing the crowded streets outside my favorite cafe on a bright sunny day, phrasing the truth about the past two years of my life word by word. I would fold my short tanned legs underneath me, unfold them, then cross them, then fold them up on the hard wood chair trying desperately to make myself feel more comfortable. The rays of sunlight shining in through the large glass windows in front of me made my olive skin glow, and tips of my…

Imagine a world without the east coast of the United States. Imagine the entire state of California evacuated due to severe drought conditions. Imagine continuous forest fires wiping out wildlife in the southern states. Although these disastrous events are not present in the world today, it may be heading in this direction due to the rapid increase in temperature, also known as climate change. The issue of climate change has been playing a variety of different roles throughout the world over the…

Community Based Programs Community based programs allows the police department not to only get involved with the community, but also allows police department to develop a relationship with the community. Since, the City of Palos Verdes Estates has a lot of senior citizen residents and that number is on the rise PVEPD created a program for the senior citizens. This program is called C.A.R.E.S program, which has only been in effect for about 3 years now. C.A.R.E.S. C.A.R.E.S program allows the…

something to protect yourself with. For ten packs of cigarettes, you know the tops brand that comes in the yellow pack? Well, for ten of those, which is considered $50, we could get moved in the same cell or at least the same dorm. That would be straight, ‘cause I don't trust too many people, bruh.” “Yeah. I read it...and I will shoot you the Tops, as soon as we get back in. Just send the trustee to me.” The two continued to walk back and forth discussing business at hand until it was time to…

A dirt road called Half Breed Drive stretches out of Auburn, Nebraska for just a few miles, through endless cornfields, past a single mailbox. But its history runs deep, with an origin story stretching back 185 years, long before Nebraska was a state, or even a territory. This road traces the top of the western boundary of the Half-Breed Tract, a failed reservation for people rooted in two cultures but welcome in neither. The story that follows only amounts to pieces that I’ve stitched together…

I was not prepared for the day I was told that my daughter had cancer. I froze as the words came out of her doctors ' mouth. I went numb and suddenly felt as if I were beside myself. At first, I did not believe the doctor and assumed he was mistakenly reading the papers of another patient. I wanted to pretend like the doctor had not mentioned anything at all. But, after a few minutes of letting the news sink in, I knew that I was going to have to suck it up and get through it, whatever the end…