Byline: Isabel Henderson

Revelations

The spirituality of sightseeing.

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Princeton ®

The way it came to me was in a letter. I think a lot of people got them, but I don’t know. It was from Dean Rapelye or maybe Malkiel, and it said something like “you are one of the particularly outstanding students admitted” and to “please consider coming to Princeton.”

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The daylily, Hemerocallis, continues to bloom for days after its scapes are cut

for L. When you left me here to rot aboveground—preferring a disintegration undersoil, solo—they did not publish the story in the paper, this being in poor taste, your being far too young to die, the Star-Ledger style guide answering the … Read More

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They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?

Every Thanksgiving, the rest of America puts a turkey in the oven and sprinkles marshmallows over sweet potatoes. They sleep in late, watch football. Or so I would imagine.

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Wild

It was my first night drinking since February. I’d decided to take a break from alcohol for all of March—now that I have the freedom to buy my own alcohol legally, I don’t feel as compelled to jump at it when offered. But mostly, I just wanted to see if I could make it for a whole month.

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Best Picture

They screened Oscar pictures in the smallest, oldest theater with its carved wooden balcony, velvet curtains, a stage pockmarked by dancers’ feet.

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The Tunnel

People start asking some time around kindergarten. It’s the fault of those LL Bean monogrammed backpacks, so ubiquitous to the elementary school experience. “What does the E stand for?” I asked a friend as she set down her Nacho Cheese … Read More

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Manuscription

I worry I will run out of words to explain you to myself but you teach me in the night, across my back you trace forgotten alphabets.

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Peer Review: Isabel Revises Jeremy’s Essay

Isabel Henderson revises Jeremy Cohen’s Common App essay.

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Young Kids of Instagram

I logged on to Facebook to check it out. Her sister was fourteen, a freshman in high school. She had about a thousand friends and did not have 113 likes—it was up to 115 now, in the thirty minutes that elapsed since Allie’s text.

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No SWUGs

A senior woman deconstructs a controversial epithet: Senior Washed-Up Girl.

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Cost-Benefit Analysis, 2013

I am to have this gold when you die. To buy ink for poems crumpled on the carpet purchased with your cancer. You’ll make nothing as a writer. But my materials are cheap. Each verse I write about you merely … Read More

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