Dorian Hartwood

I was raised on pavement. My earliest memories have the texture of concrete. I don’t remember the first time I saw a wildflower, but I remember dodging broken glass on cracked sidewalks. I don’t remember watching birds in the sky, but I remember helicopters hovering over rooftops...

It was supposed to be a homecoming.

I hadn’t been back to Puerto Rico in years. Life had done what life does—it pulled me into obligations, deadlines, and an ocean of distance...

It started with a sock.

Not a tragic moment. Not a crisis. A sock on my kitchen floor. A week into a stressful new job, three overdue bills stacked on my fridge, my mom calling...

I grew up in the dirt of a broken heart. Not metaphorically — I mean real dirt. The kind that stains your knees when you’re eight and trying to fix a busted pipe under your uncle’s trailer. The kind that smells like oil, metal, and a hundred years of hands that never stopped working. My childhood wasn’t soft. But it was real. Real like the taco my abuela made on Sundays with her hands stained red from dried chile and fire-roasted tomatoes.

And maybe you didn’t grow up in the dirt. Maybe you grew...

There was always a strange comfort in the bathroom stall. Not the act of using it, but just sitting there. Locked in. Alone. I used to fake stomach aches just to escape lunch. That fifteen minutes of quiet solitude? Way better than the clatter of trays and forced conversation I never quite knew how to navigate.

I was weird. Not eccentric or quirky in a cool, Zooey-Deschanel-in-an-indie-film way. Just weird. Reserved. Shy. The kind of kid who got invited to group projects only because the teacher...