From Home – Coalesce Community Autumnal Equinox 2022 Collection

In 10th grade, my English teacher told me I should write creative nonfiction.

He and I sometimes disagreed on things, like who was to blame for Neil Perry’s suicide in Dead Poet’s Society and how to handle temperamental teenagers in a classroom and, at the time, what genre I should write. Fiction is a safe space – one of the few in existence, then and now – where the truth can be told through vaguely pointed references and carefully compiled lies, through people who have no relation to me (at least, in any tangible sense) and situations I’ve never been known to be in.

Since the dawn of the new plague (COVID), I’ve found it difficult to conjure the plots and characters I once did without being out in the world – without going to an office every day and lounging openly in crowded bars, without the usual social interactions to which I was accustomed and by which I was inspired. In the resulting isolation, there has been an abundance of creative nonfiction.

Enjoy your I told you so, Mr. E.

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Thank you to the editors of Coalesce Community for giving my personal essay, “From Home,” somewhere else to live.

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