After spending 1 year and 5 months on a waitlist, I was finally assigned a plot in the community garden. I picked up my key from city hall, elated, and went to sit on a park bench in our city park to daydream about the potential of my garden.

Feather will be turning seven next week and I only stopped calling her a puppy last year. The finalization of the shift from “puppy” came last week, with a diagnosis of stage 3 lymphoma.

It’s Friday night and I’m surveying my face with a pair of tweezers in my bathroom mirror. These are not ideal plans for the start of this weekend – but other alternatives are similarly solo endeavors as a single woman in her twenties living alone in a pandemic…

When I first moved into my apartment, I placed handwritten notes on my neighbors’ welcome mats introducing myself and offering up my phone number in case they ever needed me…