creative nonfiction
1. Excerpt from my memoir "tales, second edition" (2024)
i kept putting it off: do it when exams start—no, when they end—no, on vacation—no, before graduation—no, after graduation—no, at the grad party—no, after the parties—no, in canada—no, after canada—no, when you get your results. and i guess i could have gone on and on like this forever, even eventually taken it to my university professors and, with an awkward smile and laugh, professed how this affair should have met its end months prior…
even still, i come now.
in the months where i let time pass around me, halting from raising a hand to type a word or two, the universe read me back my words and showed me how change likes to manifest. i never did finish those psychology assignments, but the exams came anyway, hours upon hours spent in that little library of what is now just another school of the past. providenciales was beautiful, the food permanent, the roads familiar instantly.
we graduated on may 31st instead, and the song we picked to play as we walked back across the stage, all of us finally graduated, sits in my playlist now. when i smile, there is a comfort in knowing that that frame of my mouth has seen the best moments of my life, even those now far beyond the reach of my memory. we screamed from the other side of the tent. we were graduates, and for that weekend, the world revolved solely around us.
on saturday night the party began. some of us met at another’s house prior to sundown, and we swapped stories and blushed a little and ate pizza and smiled. when we arrived at the house, the old plan of going out to the clubs now abandoned, there was music and smoke and drinks all in the atmosphere. we greeted our classmates and friends and we swapped stories and blushed a lot and ate chips and smiled some more.
when he—yes, the same old “he” from a year prior—came around asking who wanted to take shots with him, my breath caught in my lungs. we were six weeks shy of that night in spain. i met his gaze and grinned. viva la vida.
i had two drinks and eight shots that night. i played cards against humanity and made the whole group laugh. i knocked my shot glass down against the table and then back, liquid fire racing down my throat, blurring my vision. i laughed with him, and took photos of him, and crashed down the hallways with him, falling against the doors and laughing ourselves silly. in a way, we were so in love that night. not really with one another, and i know it’s foolish to think so, but with life for sure. with the feeling of elation, with the morning hours before sunlight, with being so drunk together.
i was sober by 4:30 that morning, and the troops rose from their respective places, a party of maybe eight or so of us trailing our way down the wet and empty roads towards the beach. the sun crested as we stripped to our swimsuits and ran for the ocean head-on. i twisted my ankle, almost like an homage to my youth, as i fell into the sea. it was frigid and we were chattering, all of us. when we drive down that street now, i can only see us. the cars on the road vanish, taking the blaring sun with it, and this group of teenagers can been seen by me to be sauntering down the road, twirling themselves around the bus stop, dipping into the alleyway to the beach.
and that sunday came and went, more cards and jokes and ridiculous behaviours. and all too soon, there was monday, then monday afternoon, then the last of us kids left in the house, then final hugs. i don’t know how many of them i’ll ever see again.
canada came. arianna, my greatest friend. nothing in the world can ever truly match you.
we went hiking, shopping, driving. we listened to music together, watched shows. time felt incapable of passing. those moments were a forever, and there’s a universe in which they never end. her prom came, and i went with her. the photos, the bus ride to the venue, the dinner, the music, the campfire, the sparklers, the songs, jumping along to the songs. the night was over before anyone knew what to do with themselves. this was such a celebration, such a moment. this was the rest of the world running into the ocean at dawn.
her sister dyed my hair, pinky-purple highlights coursing through my red curls. the sun would set late and the banter would never quite die. there was so much warmth in canada.
there was a night right before the end of these two weeks. arianna and i were continuing our old joke of suspicious photos, and there was a playground not far from that night’s restaurant. i photographed her on the slide, and then we explored the freezing metal jungle. there was this odd contraption that we’d never had before where you stand on opposite sides, hang on for dear life, and lean to create motion, spinning you both around endlessly. we laughed together on that bizarre spinning contraption for minutes. i mean look at us. known each other for 15 years, best friends for 11 of them. graduates. young adults. university-bound. those minutes where we were just spinning reside in my mind, warming me from the inside out.
i still haven’t learnt how to drive—to nobody’s surprise. i returned form canada and my father and sister departed for seven weeks for her to play golf tournaments across the globe. i passed the days and nights as another person, my co-host giving me time to play passenger as she explored the internet. we worked to learn ourselves, we documented names and ages and genders, and everything. we also worked, a little every week or so, to clean our room. we cleaned out the cupboard and filled the empty shelves with books, bagged up dozens of items for donation, cleaned off our desk, and set most of our life into a trunk, whatever remains waiting to be packed into big black suitcases later this week.
today is sunday, september 1st, 2024. my father and i have a flights booked for next sunday, the 8th, to england. and all so suddenly, and all so suddenly, that’s that. and all so suddenly, this book—this moment in my life—concludes gently, unsuspectingly, at 1:15 in the afternoon.
there are no less than a trillion words i would like to say here. similarly, there is no way i could ever say a trillion things. and i think that in and of itself encapsulates exactly everything i would like to say here perfectly.
…but i suppose, looking it over, it’s no wonder i kept putting it off, procrastination aside. because this has been a chapter of my life. because this is my life. because i, despite the odds of it all, am still living. and how could i ever write the final chapter of a book for a story that’s only now just beginning?
2. Excerpt from my nonfiction novella "Viva La Ávila" (2023)
(names have been changed to preserve anonymity)
I went to school on Wednesday morning with my tail between my legs, swearing that his gaze would hold some secret level of knowing and that my lusts would then be public. Even still, I slouched in my seat, disappointed, when someone announced to our professora that James was “sick”, not only because that meant he’d be missing from class, but also, James was absolutely not sick. He had to be with a girl.
I’d been hearing stories in the moments in between about this little list of girls who’d come to hang from his frame since his arrival in Ávila two weeks prior: Nicole was the first he’d picked, and now he was on to mystery girl #2, who he was surely holding hands with—or, god forbid, more—in a plaza or beneath a tree or maybe even in his house, no shame in how he was probably taking her by her chin, and pressing her lips with his, and guiding her with a hand cupping her—
“Oh, guys, Ms Maya just messaged me!”
And the hunt was on: find where our teacher was staying, her and her husband, Simon. It was a short hunt, and dinner was set for 7:00 pm.
Me and Eva decided to head over together. We stopped at the farmacia for my cough and then took in the view I’d loved on my first night. It was different without the traces of sunset dripping down the idyl, but it was no less magic, dynamic, or free. I picked a pink flower, kissed it quickly, and laid it to sleep in the pocket of my bag.
In the clearing outside of her hotel, Lucas, David, Finn, and James—predictably, not sick—found us and stood with us as we counted away the final minutes, full of anticipation. Eva commented, jokingly: “You know what’s going to happen? She’s going to throw open one of those balcony doors and say ‘Hola, Chiquis!’” We were all grins when maybe a minute later that happened exactly.
It was weird sitting on the floor of your Spanish teacher’s hotel room while your principal—her husband—sat on the chair opposite the bed, opposite her, and everyone made sweet conversation about the girls, and the smoke, and the drinks. It was even weirder when, after finally deciding on a burger restaurant, I watched silently as Mr Simon poured fresh glasses of white wine for my friends. In what world had I ended up: my strict, Welsh principal serving wine to 17-year-old girls in Ávila, Spain.
I watched him from across the table—you know who. It was hard not to after the night before, after his absence from school that had made the whole affair horribly lack-lustre. Even in the overwhelm that was that restaurant, he was a steady constant, an easy presence some five feet away. I wondered, maybe not for the first time, what it would be like to cuddle up beside him and feel the weight of his hand so casually in mine. I wondered what it would be like to feel him dip his head and whisper into my ear something about getting out of there, if for sex or just to roam the cobbled streets, fingers still intertwined, and laugh in the cold beneath the stars as the night became early morning. I wanted him to laugh because of me, to smile because of me, to swear because of me, for his eyes to light up because of me. I wanted to make him nervous like how he did I, albeit unknowingly so. I wanted him beneath me and above me and to hold me and to make me, take me, break me. The bill was paid and we were set in the street and for a moment the fantasy faded into background noise and I could swallow easily again.
To the plaza, it was decided by someone other than me. The moment we were out of range of our teachers, hugs still warm on each person’s skin, the latest box of cigarettes was making the rounds, and one more moment later, smoke was in the air.
In the plaza some drinks were bought, and when David asked why I was consistently refusing alcohol, I let slip my old habits to him: taking down Dad’s bottles from the top shelf, hiding what I could smuggle in the most obscure of ways, those endless months when I’d been more tipsy than sober, the fact that I’d stopped after two years, and that by that night it had been eight months and four days. He looked at me, eyebrows raised in disbelief, and I looked away and grinned shyly. Maybe I shouldn’t have spoken.
“I’m proud of you for that, man.” And every day sober was instantly worth it. Nobody had really known, and so nobody had ever said those words to me. My smile was real and full when I looked up again.
We, the full group of us, found ourselves gathered tightly around a table outside of Burger King, smoke encircling us as empty bottles of cheap Sangria slowly started to pile at our feet. When I looked in my bag for my camera, I came up with my flower from before dinner and took it out and set it on the spare table beside me. I looked away for a moment, and when I’d come back to myself, my flower was in James' hands, purely by chance. I hadn’t given it to him, and yet there it was, being gently caressed by his fingers. The world ceased to exist for a moment until an American walked by.
“Is Burger King open?”
David answered, the careless lilt that I was learning was a signature part of his drunken attire adorning his words. “I dunno.” A slight pause. “Is that a vape?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“Can I get a hit?”
The girl laughed, obviously. “Why?”
“The ones here are weak as shit.” That seemed to start something within her.
“Oh my god! Yeah, right?” A chair was pulled up for her. “My name’s Georgia, by the way.”
“Nice to meet you, Georgia,” David said and held out his hand. “Vape?”
And I was getting tired, to be honest. Not only because it was nearing 1 am, but also because James' eyes had found someone new to look at—this Georgia. His fingers were still twirling my flower—which he didn’t even know was mine—as he took hits from this American girl’s vape right after she did as if trying to taste her amidst the flavoured vapour. It was getting difficult to stay still and expressionless. So, when the group came back from a quick dance in the centre of the plaza, I made sure my belongings were all together, save my flower which was wilting atop the table, and stood as they sat, smiles surrounding me. I said my goodbye softly and only to him as if he hadn’t had his arm around Georgia's midsection one tipsy minute before.
“I’m going to head home.”
“Alright, night.” And his words, annoyingly, filled me with something so stubbornly sappy. Just like that, I had wanted to sit back down again and hope his eyes would stay on me and that he’d talk more to me and that I’d end up, like in my daydreams, beside him or below him. But then Georgia called his name, and in retaliation, the cold of the night called mine.
3. Excerpt from my archery journal "Ready, Aim, Fire" (2023)
Archery was the same as I remembered, but different in every way simultaneously. From memory, it was toe the shooting line, nock your arrow, draw, loose your fingers, and watch metal fly. Today the method stays the same–why should it change? Before, I was 13 and laughing with my friends, Friday-style. Now I am 17, and, quite literally, the world has changed. I can nearly hear the IB people salivating at the thought of the word I haven’t yet used: perspective.
From the moment I got there, it was different, and not just because of the location. I walked in and talked with the leading coach—the name of who I never got. I was early, 45 minutes early. She told me no problem and asked if I’d shot before. Yes. She was fitting a bracer on my left arm—”Are you a righty shooter or a lefty shooter?”—all of 5 seconds later. “Come, I’ll get you a bow.”
I waited for those already deep in their sessions to finish pulling their arrows out of the big foam targets. One of the people was an old teacher of mine, there with some friends and family. We greeted each other and went about ourselves.
“Here you go,” the coach said and handed me a bow. She took her whistle in her mouth, “One blow means clear to shoot, three means ceasefire.” She blew once and stepped away. I took the bow more tightly between my fingers and looked up.
It was the same method—toe the shooting line, nock your arrow, draw, loose your fingers, and watch metal fly. Four years ago, the instructors who came to our school had said I “showed promise”. I couldn’t take them seriously when my friends routinely outdid me. My first shot—always the worst shot in every round, the afternoon would continue to prove—was so horribly off that it missed my 20-foot target and hit the unoccupied 40-foot target at the station to my right. I laughed to myself and nocked another arrow. Promise or dumb-prowess, when I went to collect my arrows—three whistle blows—I trekked the extra steps to retrieve my first of six shots, and what do you know? Bullseye.
From there it was readjustments to my stance and lots of watching—for better or worse, I shot my six a lot faster than anybody else on the range. God, the amount of sexual tension between two teens—a lefty and a righty—who lock eyes as they nock their arrows is unbearable. I watched the two for the first 10 minutes I was there, my nose scrunching involuntarily. I watched the more experienced shooters with the expensive-looking bows decked out with stabilisers and everything else I can’t name. I took note of their stances: keep your head level; squeeze the bow, don’t strangle it; let your back elbow rise; keep your body square, only turn your head; chest out, shoulders level. I watched a little blonde boy—maybe eight or nine years old (or just very short) strut up to the line with his pro-level bow that was literally bigger than he was and hit the centre four out of six shots. I watched a boy around my age, maybe a little younger, ruffle his hair and give him a high-five while we waited for the whistle. I watched a tourist duo, a woman and her daughter, still wearing damp swimsuits beneath their matching jean shorts, come in and get excited over every arrow they shot, taking no less than about 200 pictures while they did.
More than just the people, I watched the equipment. I started with a weaker, black bow as I shot the 20-foot target. It was simple and easy, like the one I used years ago. When I decided I wanted to try the 40-foot target, my bow’s weight increased with the distance. This second one was tan, and taller, too. The string was more worn, and there were two seemingly useless, rusted little knobs on the front. My six arrows all had green fletching, and though they all looked essentially the same, I swear that each one was a different thickness between my fingers. The yellow paint of the shooting line had clearly faded many times before, but equally so, it had been repainted again, and again, and again.
When I wasn’t thumbing over the grooves of the bow, swirling the arrows in the quiver, or taking mental notes on every adjustment the lady a few down from me, who wore one of those shoulder braces (a sign she’s been doing this a while), made, I became synonymous with tennis spectators, my head snapping back between the athletes and their shots, trying with a grin to count the beats between the twang of the bowstring and the thud of the arrow meeting its mark, the professionals at the end of the range nearly getting as long as three whole seconds between shot and collision. One of them actually shot the trunk of a palm tree some 150-200 feet away. I hadn’t thought it possible. And even those who were just there for the fun of it were enchanting to watch, the easy way the arrows seemed to jump towards their targets, carefree yet charged with primordial will, it seemed. Like they had been crafted by a force to do their job and do it well, even in the face of incompetence. Like they should be the ones being cherished rather than the bows.
Another thing other than the method stayed the same: the bruises the string can leave on your forearm if you dare to forget about the danger they can pose. The moment your mind slips is the moment the pain flares. It’s easily avoidable when you’re used to it (and having thinner arms would help too, I suppose), but for an easily distractible person who loves quickfire, like myself, bruises are inevitable, even with the bracer protecting me. And now my left arm wears deep smears of colour in two places: softer and blacker where I got unlucky and the string wormed its way between the bracer and my skin, just to spite me, and angry red where I became a victim of foolery and the string struck me plainly, closer to the inner bend of my elbow. In an odd way, the sight of them, and the feel of the agitated, tight skin beneath my light-passing fingers, makes me feel more like myself. Maybe it’s just the aftershocks of my head being clear. The bruises made dinner feel earned, their soreness at every over-hasty move an easy reminder of jumping arrows and the sunset. And, in the back of my mind, I think they are a reminder of how it was to be 13. Before this pandemic, before a whole lot of other stuff, before the piercings and tattoos and alcohol, before so many of my friends moved away. I can see it now, skipping off the field at my old school, a step behind my friends as we hurried to change into swimsuits in the cramped school bathrooms—it was somebody’s birthday party that night, and he only lived a five-minute walk down the road. So the bruises are a memory, of today, and of a time some years ago, now.
I am glad that I chose archery over all the other activities there are out there. I’m glad I get to do it again next week, and then for eight more weeks after.