“skate” (an excerpt) by Caroline Rothstein

It’s a Tuesday. Early afternoon. I’m at the heated yoga studio where I practice vinyasa, especially with Liz. I like their classes. I like their voice. I like the way they put their playlists and asana sequences in conversation with astrology because that’s the way I fucking jam and it’s a good thing too because on this particular Tuesday in mid-late February 2024, it is the beginning of Pisces season, and so all of the shit Liz has been curating for the week is about spring cleaning (since Pisces is the last sign in the zodiac before we start back over again with Aries out the gate) and release and letting go. At the beginning of class, as we’ve started...

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“Driving Home” (Chapter 1) by Caroline Rothstein

Chapter 1. Augusta. I have never known church. Church is what the Christians and the Catholics do. Church is what is allegedly separated from the state. Church is the overarching metaphor for what it means to feel and see god. But I have known god. I have long felt some semblance of divinity scorching through my veins. I know I have a soul. I know I have felt the presence of the dead. I know that it was god—or G-d, as I like to call it—who had something to do with my making it back to Chicago from Philadelphia on a Sunday evening the day my brother was dying in a hospital bed. My father taught me this when I...

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