I chose to write about sisters because that’s the only story that is mine, the only story I have any right to tell.

A. At a conference called "Making Language Arts More Relevant," I sit listening to the keynote speaker talk to us about how high school graduates don’t know how to capitalize the first words of sentences. This woman is the director of human resources at a cybersecurity firm located near the high school where I teach. She is talking to us about what successful job candidates’ reading and writing looks like. We sit at our tables, listening.

You could read this Time.com essay called "Why I Don't Watch Breaking Bad," or you could not read it and write your own essay called, "Why I Didn't Read 'Why I Don't Watch Breaking Bad.'" Choose wisely.

I've read the previous essays you've written for Gawker's True Stories series and I just read your collective piece, “Echo” in Kiese’s new book, How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America. I heard, and really felt, the sinew of pain and joy in your autobiographical offerings and would like to respond with my own.

I'm a recovering debutante. I wouldn't go as far as saying a belle because I ain't with that frilly froo froo. Or girdles. I have a brain and I use it. I don’t own too many slips, or dresses, or wear much white. I don’t own a lacy parasol except for that one time where I had to accessorize with my lace ribbons for my annual Olan Mills photo.

A tale of Biblical overanalysis and high school angst, in comic form.

Last I saw you, you were stamping a kiss onto my forehead. I don't remember what you were wearing, or your smell. Only that you gave me a kiss the night before you left. That was twenty-three years ago. I was five.

I. High school went like this: "You Jewed me" and "Stop acting like a bagel." I tried desperately to hide the fact that I was offended.

“I think we should teach him to use his privilege to his advantage.”

—It seems to me that heterosexual marriage for the purposes of procreation is the very cornerstone of society. Any deviation, then, from this marital standard is contrary both to God’s natural and His moral law.—

In 1998, during a staff meeting at my first off-white collar job, tele-fundraising for arts programming in neglected city schools, someone brought up President Bill Clinton. I rolled my 20-year-old eyes and said, “Like he ever did anything for poor kids.” The woman sitting to my right, who got under folks’ skin in such a way that the phrase I’m not going to jail for her was often uttered, stepped to his defense.

Mardi Gras in June. That was the noise out the window. Like a spray of firecrackers. A tack-a-tack-a-tack-a-tack-a-tack-tack midnight burst of joy.

After I finished cutting my hair yesterday, I spent a longer time than usual staring at myself in my bathroom mirror.

In Polish, worshippers often use an honorific when referring to God. Pan Bóg. Mr. God.

Daniel Somers was a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom. He was part of Task Force Lightning, an intelligence unit. In 2004-2005, he was mainly assigned to a Tactical Human-Intelligence Team (THT) in Baghdad, Iraq, where he ran more than 400 combat missions as a machine gunner in the turret of a Humvee, interviewed countless Iraqis ranging from concerned citizens to community leaders and and government officials, and interrogated dozens of insurgents and terrorist suspects. In 2006-2007, Daniel worked with Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) through his former unit in Mosul where he ran the Northern Iraq Intelligence Center. His official role was as a senior analyst for the Levant (Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel, and part of Turkey). Daniel suffered greatly from PTSD and had been diagnosed with traumatic brain injury and several other war-related conditions. On June 10, 2013, Daniel wrote the following letter to his family before taking his life. Daniel was 30 years old. His wife and family have given permission to publish it.

An unexpected ring on my doorbell awoke me early one Sunday morning and I stumbled bleary-eyed to my front door and was greeted by a tall, strapping, sunglasses-wearing sheriff with an incongruously chipper expression clutching a sheath of papers.

I never met James Gandolfini. His work as Tony Soprano strikes me as a unique and staggering artistic achievement, but I am a non-expert fan, with no experience in acting or television. To my surprise, though, he is the first celebrity whose death has touched me in that way that celebrity deaths seem to touch people.

Any day now, possibly as soon as tomorrow, the Supreme Court of the United States will rule on whether or not access to civil marriage is the law of the land for any adult couple, gay or straight. If they do rule in favor of marriage equality, they can hardly be charged with being "activist judges," out of step with the average Joe. Instead, they'll be hurrying to catch up with a change in American perceptions on same-sex marriage that has been staggering.

The house smelled just like him.

I’ve rejected Boston.